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Two ADB Loans Totalling US$40 Million to Uzbekistan For Basic Education Textbook Development

Almost five million students in rural Uzbekistan as well as 300,000 teachers will benefit from a Basic Education Development Project for which the Asian Development Bank today approved two loans of US$20 million each and two technical assistance grants totalling US$1.4 million.

One loan of US$20 million will be from the Bank's ordinary capital resources and will be repayable within 25 years, including a grace period of five years. The interest rate on the loan will be determined by the Bank's pool-based variable lending rate system for US dollar loans. The second loan of US$20 million will come from the Bank's Special Funds Resources . The interest-free loan will be repayable within 35 years, including a grace period of 10 years, and will carry a service charge of one percent per annum. Approval of the loan is subject to the condition that the loan shall be signed when sufficient financial resources are available from the Asian Development Fund, the Bank’s concessional lending window.

Historically, the basic education curriculum in Uzbekistan had followed the model of the former Soviet Union. It is currently being revised to reflect Uzbek history and culture as well as the changing social and economic conditions. The Government has also decided to shift from Cyrillic to Latin script, and the first Uzbek language textbooks in Latin script have been published. However, economic transition has been accompanied by a serious resource constraint as the Government’s budget has come under strain. This constraint is evident for the social sector in general and education in particular. The difficult resource position has disproportionately affected capital investment, resulting in reduced availability of equipment and supplies.

The Government has recently approved an education sector reform plan which will address issues of quality, efficiency, equity, and finance in a major effort to strengthen the linkage of education to Uzbekistan's transition to a market economy. The Project aims at improving the quality and relevance of basic education by strengthening the textbook development system, a key component of the overall sectoral reform. In doing so, the Project will facilitate Uzbekistan's economic transition.

The Project will strengthen curriculum development and provide resource materials and train key persons in international practices in curriculum development. It will also enhance the pedagogical quality of textbooks by training textbook authors, and increasing the editing and design capacity. The Project will further increase the classroom use of textbooks by strengthening teacher in-service education programs and will strengthen the quality and efficiency of textbook production. In addition, the Project will increase the supply of textbooks and their durability. Finally, the Project will seek to enhance commercialization and the commercial viability of the domestic publishing and printing industry.

About 4.7 million rural students in Grades 1 to 9 will receive new and better quality textbooks and supplementary materials. 300,000 teachers will receive new teacher guides, and about 12,000 senior teachers will receive formal in-service training in the use of the new textbooks.

The executing agencies will be the Ministry of Public Education for the concessional loan and the National Bank for Foreign Economic Activity of the Republic of Uzbekistan for the ordinary capital resources loan.

In addition to the two loans, the Bank will provide a $900,000 technical assistance grant to monitor the implementation of education reform and a $500,000 grant for capacity building in education finance. Both technical assistance grants will be financed from the Japan Special Fund.

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