Modernizing Afghan State-Owned Banks Project

The development objective of the Modernizing Afghan State-Owned Banks Project for Afghanistan is to enhance the corporate governance and operational efficiency of the supported Afghan state‐owned banks (SBs), thereby contributing to their improved financial soundness and outreach. The project comprises of three components. The first component, improving Ministry of Finance (MOF’s) ownership role and the corporate governance of SBs will support MoF and the SBs to address the outlined governance issues through technical assistance (TA) support to the MoF and each of the SBs. It consists of following sub-components: (i) strengthening the ownership and oversight role of MoF; and (ii) strengthening the corporate governance of SBs. The second component, institutional development, business strategy, and information technology (IT) of SBs will provide support for a full-scale reengineering of almost the entirety of the banks’ operations, based on a defined mission and business strategy. It consists of following sub-components: (i) building institutional capacity of banks and supporting IT modernization strategy of SBs and immediate IT maintenance; (ii) supporting the institutional development and implementation of business plans; and (iii) supporting the modernization of IT systems and business processes of SBs. The third component, project implementation and monitoring will provide necessary funding for building the required capacity and leveraging specific expertise to support of implementation and coordination of the project at the MoF and SBs.