Minister for Economic Affairs, Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar witnessed the signing ceremony of grant agreement of “Covid-19 Response, Recovery and Resilience in Education Project” worth US$19.85 million with the World Bank, held on November 25, 2020, in Ministry of Economic Affair.

Islamabad, November 25, 2020

Minister for Economic Affairs, Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar witnessed the signing ceremony of grant agreement of “Covid-19 Response, Recovery and Resilience in Education Project” worth US$19.85 million with the World Bank, held today, in Ministry of Economic Affair. The project is aimed to strengthen and support federal and provincial actions in the education sector to better: i) respond to and recover from the COVID-19 crises in the short term; and; ii) to lay the foundation for resilience to face future crisis, with a focus on disadvantage areas and vulnerable populations. The project interventions will help the government to ensure learning continuity in the country through expansion of national distance learning content and distribution of learning material in lagging areas, protect the students’ and teachers’ health safety and wellbeing, designing and implementing distance learning competency standards, promote safe schools, support teachers & students to prepare for the recovery through delivery of teacher training and better coordination across provinces. Mr. Noor Ahmed, Secretary, Ministry of Economic Affairs signed the Grant Agreement on behalf of the Government of Pakistan while Mr. Najy Benhassine, Country Director, World Bank signed the grant agreement on behalf of the World Bank. The Minister for Economic Affairs, Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar, thanked the World Bank Country Management for extending their continuous support to the Government of Pakistan in its efforts to overcome the COVID-19 pandemic issue; particularly learning continuity in the country. The Country Director, World Bank assured their continuous support to Government of Pakistan in achieving the priority development objectives.