The Philippines will borrow from the World Bank next year for two projects supporting the education and small business sectors.

A Nov. 27 project information document (PID) showed that a $600-million loan for the Department of Education’s Project for Learning Upgrade Support and Decentralization (PLUSD) is scheduled for approval by World Bank’s Washington-based board on March 31, 2026.

This upcoming investment project financing (IPF) from the World Bank will cover the bulk of the $661.5-million total project cost. The Philippine government would shell out the remaining $61.5 million as counterpart funding.

According to the document, the forthcoming DepEd project aims to “improve the foundational literacy and numeracy of primary education earners, as well as the learning outcomes in reading and mathematics of lower secondary education learners in public schools nationwide.”

The World Bank noted that the Philippines’ human capital indicators remain weak compared to its regional peers, with a 2020 Human Capital Index of 0.52—reflecting that Filipino adults reach only about half of their productive potential due to factors such as poverty, stunting, low educational attainment, teenage pregnancy, and underemployment.

For the World Bank, high stunting rates and a rising age dependency ratio further underscore the need for stronger investments in human capital, especially basic education.

Citing the results of recent global education assessments, the World Bank lamented that the Philippines faces a severe learning crisis, with extremely low proficiency levels across reading, mathematics, and science, and with 91 percent of 10-year-olds unable to read and understand age-appropriate text—far worse than most regional peers.

The Covid-19 pandemic further deepened these losses, with the country’s prolonged school closures expected to reduce learning-adjusted years of schooling by up to 1.8 years, the World Bank added.

Meanwhile, the government is also set to borrow for the Department of Trade and Industry’s (DTI) Philippines COMPETE for SMEs, with the World Bank IPF scheduled for approval on Aug. 31, 2026.

The $373-million DTI project would “support small and medium enterprises to export and integrate in global and domestic value chains through investment finance, quality certification, and market connections,” according to a Nov. 12 concept environmental and social review summary disclosed last week.

The World Bank has yet to disclose how much it will lend for this project.

According to the World Bank, the Philippines COMPETE Plus for SMEs project aims to strengthen the competitiveness of small and medium-sized enterprises, which continue to face productivity gaps, limited export participation, and barriers to joining value chains.

By providing capability upgrading, quality certifications, digital platforms, and improved access to finance, the project seeks to help SMEs integrate into domestic and global markets, the World Bank said.

Its four components—exporter and supplier development, quality assurance ecosystem strengthening, digital platform development, and project management—work together to address the key constraints holding SMEs back, it added.