The World Bank would lend about 1.205 billion dollars to Pakistan for nine water projects in next four years.
These projects were identified in the World Bank''s report captioned, "Pakistan Country Water Resources Assistance Strategy".
An important objective of this report is to help define water requirements of the country (known as the Country Assistance Strategy), which will govern relationships between the World Bank and Pakistan for the period 2006-2010.
Federal and provincial governments and management of the World Bank have agreed that water management is one of the central development challenges facing Pakistan and that investment in this sector must be increased substantially, which was 0.5 percent of GDP during 2003.
The federal government''s allocation for water in the Public Sector Development Programme jumped from Rs 20 billion in FY2005 to over Rs 35 billion in FY2006, representing an increase of 75 percent.
The bank assistance would support four pillars of the water sector, including assistance in development and management, water resources management, service delivery and on-farm productivity.
There is an agreement that there will be a major increase in the bank''s lending for water-related activities. This would mean water-related lending for Pakistan would increased about ten fold from 2000-04 period, and account for about $1 billion in the coming four years. The tentative lending programme for these years would be as follows:
The policy framework could include a medium-term 10-year vision of how Punjab wishes to change its management of water resources and irrigation services.
Components include, water management (with special emphasis on groundwater); infrastructure for restoring hydrological balance of Band Khushdad Khan; construction of delay action dams and selected small-scale irrigation projects; on-farm water management; modernisation of irrigation systems and subsidies for efficient on-farm irrigation systems and modern irrigation technologies; and institutional development among farmers, water users and different levels of government.
Farmers and farmer organisations will play a major role and would compete for a set of "rewards" for meeting specified "entry conditions". The "entry conditions" would relate to items like formation of farmer organisation, commitment to implementing water entitlements, provider/user contracts, water measurement and monitoring.
The "rewards" would be investment in capacity building, canal modernisation, measurement devices, and on-farm services and possibly an option in which farmers could choose "professional management".
It will include major investments in knowledge management (including modernisation of measuring equipment, decision support systems, and priority-applied research); it will include training of a new generation of multi-disciplinary water resources specialists; and will include stimulation of centres of excellence for water resources sciences.