The Philippines will repay its new $600-million World Bank loan for education reform until 2055, while also securing a separate $24.5-million grant to support sustainable agriculture transformation, newly signed agreements between the government and the Washington-based multilateral lender showed.

Finance Secretary Frederick D. Go signed both agreements on behalf of the Philippine government last Tuesday, May 26, while World Bank division director for the Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei Zafer Mustafaoğlu signed the Project for Learning Upgrade Support and Decentralization (PLUS-D) loan agreement last April 9 as well as the Technical Assistance for Sustainable Agriculture Transformation in the Philippines Project (TASAT) grant agreement last May 6.

For the PLUS-D loan, the World Bank agreed to lend the Philippines to improve foundational literacy and numeracy among primary education learners, as well as reading and mathematics outcomes among lower secondary students in public schools nationwide.

The World Bank approved the PLUS-D financing last April 3 as part of efforts to address the country’s worsening learning crisis and weak student performance in international assessments.

Under the agreement, the loan carries a front-end fee equivalent to 0.25 percent of the total amount, as well as a commitment charge of 0.25 percent annually on the unwithdrawn balance.

While this project loan will close in end-August 2032, the Philippines will begin repaying the principal in March 2037, with semiannual payments every mid-March and mid-September until March 2055.

The agreement showed that PLUS-D seeks to strengthen learning recovery programs for kindergarten to Grade 10 (K-10) students, including support for the Academic Recovery and Accessible Learning (ARAL) Program through teacher training, literacy and numeracy assessments, mentoring, as well as procurement of teaching materials.

The project will also support teacher professional development, classroom coaching, school leadership training, and participation in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Schools in selected public schools.

Also, the loan financing will help improve digitalization in education, expand access to learning resources for students with disabilities and indigenous learners, as well as provide laptops for eligible K-10 teachers nationwide.

Part of the funding will likewise be used for school and regional office grants, project monitoring and evaluation, communications campaigns, grievance mechanisms, as well as strengthening the implementation capacity of the Department of Education (DepEd), PLUS-D’s implementing agency.

Meanwhile, the government also signed a separate grant agreement for TASAT, a technical assistance (TA) project that would complement the $1-billion Philippines Sustainable Agriculture Transformation Program (PSAT)—the country’s biggest-ever World Bank loan to date.

The World Bank’s board greenlit TASAT’s grant financing last April 23.

Unlike loans, grants extended by multilateral lenders like the World Bank need not be repaid by recipient governments.

Under the agreement, the World Bank committed up to $24.5 million for the project through the Food Systems 2030 Multi-Donor Trust Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), the World Bank Group’s (WBG) lending arm for developing countries like the Philippines, through its Surplus-Funded Livable Planet Fund.

Of the total commitment, $14.5 million will come from Food Systems 2030, while $10 million will be sourced from Livable Planet Fund.

The project aims to strengthen institutional capacity and systems for climate-smart agriculture, fertilizer subsidy reform, crop diversification, as well as export development in line with PSAT.

The grant will support efforts to improve rice-based farming systems and climate resilience through TA for the national rice program, climate-smart agriculture training, as well as pilot reforms for fertilizer subsidies aimed at making government support more climate-responsive and efficient.

The project will also support the expansion of high-value crops (HVCs), improve farmer access to planting technologies and post-harvest systems, strengthen farmer-buyer linkages, as well as develop digital monitoring systems for cold storage requirements.

Also, the financing will help the Department of Agriculture (DA), which implements both PSAT and TASAT, strengthen agrifood exports through regulatory reforms, trade facilitation systems, as well as support for private-sector export initiatives.

Part of the grant will likewise be allocated for institutional strengthening, including improvements in budgeting, internal audit systems, green procurement practices, environmental and social risk management, project monitoring, as well as data verification systems.

TASAT’s closing dates were set in end-March 2030 for the Food Systems 2030 portion and end-December 2030 for the Livable Planet Fund portion.