“Destroyed homes, farmland, and business and lost livestock and harvests will push at least 700,000 additional Nepalese below the poverty line, many of them in the hard-hit rural mountain areas where poverty was already high,” said Mayumi Ozaki, financial sector specialist with ADB’s South Asia Department.
“We must help families get back on their feet as soon as possible so they can rebuild their lives,” he said. On top of the $15 million grant, the Nepal government will provide additional $1.3 million and the Small Farmers Development Bank, a Nepali umbrella micro-finance bank, will provide $1.5 million.
Around $8.1 million of the overall funding will be used to rebuild at least 14 model disaster-resilient schools, and seven million will be mobilised to provide micro-credit to at least 12,500 households in the affected districts. Further $1.9 million will finance training to help people better understand how to prepare and cope with disasters. The 7.8-magnitude earthquake affected at least 2.3 million households and 5.6 million workers in Nepal.