The Nepal Earthquake Housing Reconstruction Multi-Donor Trust Fund

Nepal’s reconstruction is considered one of the largest and most challenging reconstruction endeavors because of its wide-ranging geographical coverage, mountainous terrain and inexperienced government agencies to undertake such massive reconstruction and recovery programs. There was a need for pooling in resources to collectively support Government of Nepal in its recovery program. Therefore, World Bank facilitated the establishment of a Multi Donor Trust Fund (MDTF). The MDTF has secured USD 34.54 million in contributions from Government of Canada- Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Swiss Agency for Development (SDC) and Cooperation and United Kingdom- Department for International Development (DfID).

The objectives of the MDTF is to support effective implementation of Earthquake Housing Reconstruction Project (EHRP).

The development objective of World Bank supported Earthquake Housing Reconstruction Project (EHRP) is to “to restore affected houses with multi-hazard resistant core housing units in targeted areas and to enhance Government’s ability to improve long-term disaster resilience”.  EHRP so far has financed USD 700million through concessional IDA credits to Government of Nepal, which supports housing grant of Nepalese Rupees, 300,000 to approximately 240,000 eligible beneficiaries to build multi-hazard resistant houses. The EHRP has adopted owner-driven housing reconstruction approach that is premised on the homeowners constructing earthquake-resistant houses under continued socio-technical facilitation provided by the government and development partners.  This approach aims at improving long-term resilience through a culture of safer and sustainable housing. Safer construction is ensured by providing the housing grants in three tranches where second and third tranche are contingent upon satisfactory compliance to construction guidelines approved by the National Reconstruction Authority (NRA). The MDTF support has been crucial in bridging capacity gaps, scaling-up housing subsidies, and providing just-in-time technical assistance and advisory support to NRA on a range of topics.

The World Bank-administered Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF) has helped channel the financial assistance from Nepal’s main development partners for housing reconstruction. To date, it has secured USD 34.47 million in contributions from the Government of Canada, DFID, SDC and USAID.  Among the range of activities supported by MDTF, USD 10 million recipient-executed grant is aimed to provide housing subsidies to approximately 3,700 beneficiary households.

Five years after the devastating 2015 earthquake, out of 827,167 eligible program beneficiaries, 781,176 has enrolled in the program by signing the participation agreement. While 776,957 enrolled beneficiaries have already received first tranche, 642,026 have received the second tranche and 550,590 have received the third tranche of housing grant.