Kathmandu, August 25

The agreement with the World Bank Group (WBG) to mobilise its assistance for the next phase of Nepal Health Sector Support Programme (2016 to 2021) has stalled since long as the government has still not submitted the audit report of the second phase of the programme.

The second phase of NHSSP was concluded in July this year. Consequently, all the programmes of the Ministry of Health (MoH) run under the Nepal Health Sector Support Programme that mobilises the development assistance from the basket fund are in limbo.

The government failed to submit audit report on time as the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) had seized relevant documents for investigation from some of the districts on doubt of corruption. This, in turn, affected timely reporting and auditing of the second phase of NHSSP that had concluded in July, according to the health ministry.

But the fact is that the second phase of NHSSP had actually concluded in July of last year. However, the MoH had sought no cost extension of the programme with development partners, including the WBG, for the programme citing devastating earthquakes of last year that affected continuation of regular programmes in hard-hit districts.

The officials of the International Economic Cooperation Coordination Division under the Ministry of Finance have said that the WBG had agreed to provide $120 million for the next phase of the programme.

Mahendra Prasad Shrestha, joint secretary of MoH, said that joint financial agreement will be signed with WBG once the issue of audit is settled, although he is not sure when the agreement will be signed.

To implement next phase of the programme, the WBG and the Department for International Development, UK, principally agreed to provide assistance worth $120 million and $85 million, respectively, for the next five years.

According to Shrestha, during the initial talks, WBG had said that the multilateral bank can provide assistance of $200 million for the next phase programme based on the results.

For the next phase, the WBG will provide assistance on ‘project for result’ basis. Based on the set indicators to measure the results, the WBG will disburse the amount. Nepal has done praiseworthy job in terms of achieving targets set by Millennium Development Goals to improve social sector indicators that are related to health like maternal and infant mortality rates, among others.

Shrestha, joint secretary of the MoH, has said that all the groundwork to start the next phase projects has been completed; the MoH has prepared the Nepal Health Sector Strategy for 2016 to 2021 and developed its implementation plan.

Nepal Health Sector Strategy is the government’s next five-year strategy and all the government run projects have been developed based on the vision of the strategy. However, as the negotiation process has been stalled, it might be difficult to meet the goals of the programme as per schedule.