Social Protection Development

closed

The objective of the Social Protection Development Project for Azerbaijan is to improve delivery of labor market and social protection interventions through strengthened institutions, enhanced institutional and human resources capacity, and improved targeting of social safety net programs. There are four components to the project. The first is the labor market reform. It will help to significantly improve labor market institutions, policies and programs and strengthen capacity for labor market and employment policy formulation and implementation. The component is the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Population (MLSPP) capacity building and social safety net development, this will assist modernization of the MLSPP administration, introduction of monitoring and evaluation, improvements in performance of the targeted social assistance, restructuring of the disability certification service and piloting of integrated provision of the social protection programs. The Third is the pension system development. It will assist the Government in: (i) performing a comprehensive analysis of the current pension system, including actuarial analysis of its affordability and fiscal sustainability and an analysis of individual welfare consequences for different types of its participants (formal sector employees, farmers, arrangements for informal sector workers, average, high and low income earners, etc.). This analysis will also include a thorough assessment of the economic and institutional preconditions for diversification of the pension system; and (ii) formulating options for the long term development of the pension system and modeling their fiscal and welfare consequences. Finally, the fourth component is the project management. This component will strengthen MLSPP's and a State Social Protection Fund (SSPF's) capacity to efficiently and effectively implement the Social Protection Development Project (SPDP), while observing International Development Associations (IDA's) fiduciary and safeguard requirements. It will finance consultant services and incremental operating costs.