The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) approved a loan for $80 million to consolidate and streamline Solidaridad, the Dominican Republic’s social safety net, improve human capital formation, and raise the quality of health services.
The loan aims to protect the livelihoods of poor families, provide incentives for more health, nutrition, and education services, and inform beneficiaries of their responsibilities. It is expected that Solidaridad―the Dominican conditional cash transfer program―will cover some 600,000 households in 2012.
"The aim of this program is to break the cycle of poverty by increasing the stock of human capital among the poor, which is presently well below the national average, and which reduces their chances for a better future," said Ignez Tristao, IDB health specialist and project team leader.
Despite significant investments in the program and progress made, such as creation of a management system for health services (SGC), a further need was found to strengthen the provision of these services by equipping medical facilities, training human resources, and improving the way the services are provided.
The program will include equipping 252 primary care centers, establishing vaccination centers, and strengthening the network of laboratories and blood banks. In addition, the program will extend the use of the SGC, which has established electronic patient registries across the country. This move will make it possible to establish electronic referral and counter-referral system for patients, register vaccinations, and linking them with complementary services, such as laboratories.
The program will also address challenges presented by numbers of students who are overage for their classes and the sharp drop in attendance after age 14. A new system of transfer payments for each child enrolled in school will be studied; the higher the grade in school, the higher will be the incentive.
Since early pregnancies among the poor is a major cause of school dropouts, support will be provided to the Ministry of Public Health to raise awareness regarding personal, sexual, and reproductive health, and train human resources for this purpose.
Approximately $42.7 million of the loan will fund conditional transfers for families who have met their responsibilities. The government's annual budget for this purpose is $130 million.
This operation is the third in a multi-phase program to support the country’s social protection program. The IDB loan was extended for a term of 25 years with a grace period of two years and a rate based on LIBOR. The executing agency is the Social Policy Coordination Council (GCPS).