Illiteracy in Pakistan is still high and half of the adult population cannot read or write. In all, two thirds of Pakistani women are illiterate. According to an observation of World Bank, only about half of the 20 million children, aged between five and nine years, are going to school in Pakistan.
The reform programme in Pakistan has seen this country of over 140 million people turnaround a deteriorating macroeconomic situation to one showing rapid improvements.
In 2004-05 the country's GDP (gross domestic product) grew by more than eight percent. Public debt has fallen to about 60 percent of GDP from almost 90 percent in 2000-2001.
Pakistan is the World Bank's fifth-largest borrower. The main focus of the Bank's work in support of Pakistan's reform agenda is to promote sustained growth through improved competitiveness and governance and to ensure that poor people, particularly vulnerable groups like women, have access to social services and opportunities to improve their lives. World Bank loans to Pakistan were 950 million dollars in the 2005 financial year.
In Punjab, a series of World Bank loans - worth in total about 300 million dollars - have supported the province's education sector programme, provided free textbooks, scholarships for girls and funding for school reconstruction.
According to World Bank sources, the results were obvious within one year of the start of the programme, about 13 percent increase in primary school enrolment at government schools, about 23 percent rise in girls' enrolment in grades 6 to 8 in low-literacy districts, where girls were offered a stipend to go to school.
Overall, one million more children enrolled in Punjab's schools since the launch of the reform programme. That was one of the findings of a recent household survey, which showed that net primary school enrolment rates jumped from 45 percent in 2001 to 58 percent in 2004-2005. Another key area of Bank support to Pakistan has been to the country's bid to break the cycle of poverty among the rural and urban poor through its Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund. Set up by the government of Pakistan in 1997, and funded by two credits totalling 330 million dollars from the Bank, the project has reached 40,000 communities through micro credit loans and community-driven small-scale infrastructure projects.
The project - now in its second phase - has already been successful in helping millions of poor. More than 600,000 micro-credit loans have been granted (almost half of which went to women). In the first half of the 2005, 54 percent of the borrowers were women. More than 8,000 community infrastructure projects of which 5,500 have been completed - covering such areas as water supply, sanitation, irrigation channels, and rural roads. All completed projects are being effectively maintained by the local communities. More than 100,000 people trained (more than 90,000 were community members of which 40 percent were women).
A Gallop Pakistan study found clear pay-off for families, which had taken out micro-credit loans. On average, a micro-credit loan resulted in families not only improving their income, but also their personal and business assets, housing facilities and their social status - especially in the case of women.
Meanwhile, the ministry of women development would extend micro-credit facility to 265 potential rural women for their socio-economic empowerment.
These loans to potential rural women under the "Jafakash Aurat Programme" would be executed through First Women Bank Limited (FWBL), Khashhali Bank (KB) and Aga Khan Rural Supports Programme (AKRSP) by the end of December 2005.
They added that 480 rural women would also be trained to add value in different skills, trades by the KB, FWBL and AKRSP by the end of 2006.
They further said that 2,768 employment opportunities would be created for the rural women by the AKRSP, KB, and FWBL by the end of 2006.
Official sources stated that further 480 loans (micro credit) would be disbursed by the KB, AKRSP, and FWBL among the trained/potential borrowers till September 30, 2006.
They added that the ministry of women development also plans to establish 11 crisis centres for women in distress and to protect women against violence and abuse at Punjab, Sindh, NWFP, Balochistan and Azad Jammu and Kashmir.
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