WASHINGTON, USA (CMC) — The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) yesterday approved a US$50-million policy base loan to Jamaica to protect basic health, nutrition, early childhood development and education.

The IDB said that the funds would also shield Jamaica’s poor and vulnerable from the effects of the economic downturn, and to improve the effectiveness of reforms to key poverty-alleviation programmes that make up the country’s social safety net.

The funding is the second and last operation of a programmatic series in support of the government’s Human Capital Protection Programme and targets key social programmes by focusing on preventive health and nutrition for women and children, early childhood development, and primary, secondary and special education.

The IDB said the funds would also support efforts to improve the effectiveness of the government’s conditional cash transfer programme, the “Programme of Advancement through Health and Education” (PATH), recertify PATH’s beneficiaries and increases coverage to 320,000 eligible individuals.

“It will also see to it that at least 20 per cent of children born in 2010 are using the Child Health Passport to monitor the timely use of early childhood services from several social sectors, support the School Feeding Programme, which provides incentives for improved school attendance, and help evaluate innovative programmes that form part of the Social Safety Net,” the IDB said in a statement.

It said the programme will contribute to ensuring that the rate of chronic malnutrition in children under five years of age does not increase beyond 3.7 per cent; infant mortality does not raise above 26 per thousand live births; school enrolment rates do not fall below 92 per cent for children three to five years old and 78 per cent for children six to 14 years old; and the poverty rate does not increase above 16.5 per cent.

The bank’s loan is for a 20-year term, with a five-year grace period.