The government of India and the World Bank today signed a loan agreement of $150 million for the e-delivery of public services development policy loan under the national e-governance plan (NeGP), a flagship e-governance initiative of the government of India aimed at transforming the service delivery system across the country.

The Agreement was signed by the representatives from the government of India and the World Bank. The signatories to the Agreement were Mr Venu Rajamony, Joint Secretary, on behalf of the Government of India and Mr Roberto Zagha, Country Director, World Bank, India.

The e-Delivery of Public Services Development Policy Loan signed today will support NeGP’s countrywide plans of increasing online services for citizens in their locality to improve the quality of basic governance in areas of concern to the common man.

While this World Bank loan will not target specific services per se, it will support the various policies and institutional actions of the Government of India (GOI) in accessing more services online as well as in increasing its outreach to the common man.

“This loan will support critical policy measures within Government’s overall e-Governance reform agenda leading to more robust implementation of NeGP with significant social benefits for the population and positive impact on the poor,” said Shankar Aggarwal, Additional Secretary, Department of Information Technology. 

“The NeGP has plans to significantly widen citizen access to e-services. We are certain that, this loan from the World Bank will support NeGP in its efforts to ensure efficient, cost effective, accessible and transparent delivery of public services across the country,” said Venu Rajamony, Joint Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs.

“The Government of India’s aim of providing web-enabled anytime, anywhere access to information and e-services can have significant social and economic benefits. Reducing the financial and opportunity costs of obtaining specific services through enabling policy measures can go a long way in transforming service delivery in the country,” said Roberto Zagha, World Bank Country Director in India.
 
“This loan will also support the adoption of a policy framework for the delivery of basic financial services using mobile phones, which we hope will increase citizens’ access to online services,” said Ranjana Mukherjee and Shashank Ojha, Project Team Leaders and World Bank’s Senior Public Sector Specialist and Senior e-Government Specialist respectively. “The new IT-enabled system, as opposed to the manual one, will be able to take feedback from citizens, automatically log the time of processing and track the quality of services provided,” they added.
 
The loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has a 5-year grace period and a maturity of 18 years.