Marking ten years of its establishment, SAARC Development Fund (SDF) shared that it is working with its partners to fund projects to mitigate the financial losses and severe socio-economic impact due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the SAARC Member States under its Social funding window.
SDF was established as the umbrella financial institution for SAARC projects and programmes a decade ago, on 28th April 2010, during the 16th SAARC Summit held in Thimphu.
“Recently, we have received some project proposals from the Member States for funding under the COVID-19 emergency grant programme. These projects are going to be funded by the SDF. We are fully committed how to mitigate the losses and how to analyse the impact especially in the case of socio-economic areas. So for that we are trying to work out some strategies and we are expected to implement the project under our existing policy of the social window whereby we are funding the healthcare,” said Sunil Motiwal (PhD), the CEO for SDF.
Earlier this month, SDF announced the allocation of USD 5 M under its Social Funding Window to support its Member States respond to COVID-19.
In the last ten years, SDF has implemented 90 projects in the SAARC region under its three funding windows of Economic, Infrastructure and Social. The projects include strengthening the livelihood of home-based workers, addressing the needs of farmers, reducing mother and child mortality, delivering connectivity and content of e-governance to rural people, ending violence against women and children, and improving access to water, sanitation and hygiene in the region.
In Bhutan, SABAH Bhutan- a project working towards strengthening the livelihood of home-based workers, the establishment of Community Centres and Maternal Child Health are among the few projects that were successfully implemented over the last ten years.
“In the social sector, we have committed around USD 9 M with around 10 projects. In the economic sector, recently we funded one of the new aircraft of the DrukAir. And in the infrastructure sector we have received some bankable projects also which is under our active consideration especially in the area of renewable energy and there are also other areas like ICT. So Bhutan has got a number of projects funded by us and we are working on some other bankable projects which we will fund. So Bhutan will certainly have the advantage with the SDF office being located here,” he added.
SDF has an authorized capital of USD 1.5bn. Bhutan along with Nepal is one of the largest recipients of financial assistance from the SDF.
Phub Gyem
