Pakistan Employment Impact Bond
Aligned SDGs
- Pakistan Employment Impact Bond
- General overview
- Intervention
- Location
- Last data update
- Spreadsheet of data
- Pakistan Employment Impact Bond
- General overview
- Intervention
- Location
- Last data update
- Spreadsheet of data
General overview
Stage of development: Early stage
Policy sectors: Employment and private sector development
Type of instrument: Impact Bond / Outcomes Fund / Technical Assistance and Market-building program (Must involve dedicated grant resources)
Delivery locations: Pakistan
Country classification: Lower-middle-income
Intervention
Social or environmental challenge
Skills development overall is chronically underfunded in Pakistan with as little as USD 83 million allocated to it by the federal government. In Punjab, the state government allocates less than 1% of the total available budget towards developing a skilled workforce. Moreover, skilling programmes tend to be of poor quality, and often not aligned to market needs. From a gender perspective, only a third of trainee positions in vocational training institutions are available to women. Among the positions that are available, women are channelled into traditional trades further entrenching gender stereotypes and limiting women's participation in more financially lucrative sectors.
The program aims to draw in new sources of funding for the skilling sector through a robust payment-by-results mechanism that will ensure upfront flexible funding to incentivize training providers to design and deliver demand-led innovative solutions that result in employment outcomes for the target group with a strong gender lens.
Description of the intervention
The British Asian Trust (BAT) is launching Pakistan's first Development Impact Bond (DIB) in the Punjab. The DIB will promote the skills development of young people, with a focus on supporting young women into sustainable employment. BAT has undertaken a comprehensive feasibility study in Pakistan, funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB), which identified emerging trends and gaps within the skills development sector and contextual requirements for implementing an outcomes-based solution with a particular focus on women.
Having grown the innovative finance ecosystem in India, we will this experience and expertise in Pakistan. Given the nascent market, funding from the Accelerator would allow BAT to develop the first of its kind outcomes-based financial instrument acting as a catalyst for innovative finance in Pakistan. Our objective is to ensure that the DIB is transformative for the skills ecosystem in Pakistan by enabling cross-sector partnerships to align incentives for all stakeholders towards the achievement of outcomes. This will have a significant positive impact beyond the lifecycle of the proposed solution by strengthening an emerging impact investing ecosystem within Pakistan. Additionally, we will aim to showcase how government funding can be deployed to focus on longer term and gender focused outcomes.
Location
Country:
- Pakistan
Locality:
- Pakistan
Last data update
Data for this pipeline project was last updated in May 2024
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Spreadsheet of data
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