source: www.iloubnan.info

The World Bank's Board of Directors approved a Social Protection and Promotion Project (SPPP) for Lebanon that aims to increase access to basic services for poor and vulnerable segments of the Lebanese population and support opportunities to help them generate higher income, as well as to strengthen the capacity of the Ministry of Social Affairs at the central and local levels. According to Lebanon This Week, Byblos Bank's business news bulletin, the Bank extended a $30m loan to Lebanon to fund the SPPP. The World Bank indicated that the SPPP will establish a national Community Social Development program that will provide financing through grants of up to $50,000 to small community-based projects. It noted that the $12.5m program will be fully financed through the loan. It indicated that $9.1m will be earmarked to the Ministry of Social Affairs' 200 social development centers in order to improve their administrative and operational capacities.

It added that $6.7m will be allocated to Lebanon's National Poverty Targeting Program in order to expand its coverage from 93,900 beneficiaries to 160,700 beneficiaries over the next five years. Further, it said that $2.1m will finance the establishment of a team that will be in charge of coordinating the SPPP over the next five years. The SPPP is in line with the goals of the World Bank's Lebanon Country Partnership Strategy (CPS) for 2011-2014, which gives priority to the development and improvement of Lebanon's weak and fragmented social safety net system.

The project also supports the Ministry of Social Affairs' National Social Development Strategy.

image: (The Daily Star/Hasan Shaaban)