Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

• Sure Start children's centres, and their erosion

  England built a national network of early-childhood centres reaching 3,632 sites by August 2009, then closed or hollowed out a large part of it after funding was cut, with the official count at 3,123 by October 2017 and independent estimates near 1,000 closures.

• The FCA regulatory sandbox

  The United Kingdom's financial regulator built the first regulatory sandbox in 2016, and by the end of 2022 had accepted 168 firms and products to test with real customers under supervision.

• Legally binding carbon budgets

  The United Kingdom's 2008 Climate Change Act made five-year emissions budgets a standing legal cycle set twelve years ahead, and by July 2026 seven budgets covered 2008 through 2042 while the first three had been met.

• Knowledge Transfer Partnerships

  UKRI reported more than 1,000 Knowledge Transfer Partnerships running at one time and more than 1,100 Associate projects in May 2026, joining businesses with universities or other research organisations through jointly supervised innovation work.

• British Patient Capital, a public venture-capital catalyst

  The British Business Bank reported that government-owned British Patient Capital had committed £2.287 billion through 80 fund commitments, 10 co-investments and 18 Future Fund deals by 31 March 2024, with an underlying portfolio of 1,350 companies.

• ICURe, from university research to spinouts

  UK Research and Innovation's ICURe impact report says spinout companies from the programme secured £326 million in investment funding and created more than 1,400 jobs from 2014 onward, after research teams were trained and funded to test markets before deciding whether to spin out.

• High Speed Two, and the cancellation of Phase 2

  The Department for Transport and HS2 Ltd began building High Speed Two in 2020. The government cancelled everything beyond Birmingham in 2023. By May 2026 the London to Birmingham railway alone was estimated at £87.7 billion to £102.7 billion, more than double the 2020 Phase 1 estimate, with services from Old Oak Common expected between 2036 and 2039 against a 2012 plan to complete the full network by 2033.

• Crossrail, the Elizabeth line

  The Department for Transport and Transport for London built Crossrail through Crossrail Ltd from 2009. The NAO put its forecast cost at 28% above the 2010 budget of £14.8 billion and its opening at up to three and a half years past the original December 2018 date. The central section opened in 2022 and carried 257.4 million journeys between April 2025 and March 2026.

• COVID-19 Vaccine Taskforce and national vaccination rollout

  The UK government set up the Vaccine Taskforce in April 2020, became the first country to authorise a COVID-19 vaccine and begin vaccination in December 2020, and by the end of October 2021 the NHS in England had given two doses to 85% of adults.

• Government-funded adult further education in England, and its erosion

  Participation of adults aged 19 and over in government-funded further education and skills in England fell from a recent peak of nearly 3.3 million learners in 2012/13 to 1.6 million in 2020/21, and stood at 1,798,970 in 2024/25, according to the Department for Education.

• Private Finance Initiative and PF2, and their abolition

  HM Treasury's Private Finance Initiative signed on average 55 contracts a year between 1997 and 2010 and left 704 current PFI and PF2 projects with a capital value of £57 billion at 31 March 2018, after signings fell to an average of nine a year after May 2010 and the Chancellor announced at Budget 2018 that the government would no longer use PF2 for new projects.

Every delivery from United Kingdom

• Plano Real, the 1994 currency stabilisation

  Brazil ended four decades of high inflation with a staged currency reform, taking annual consumer price inflation from 2,075.9 percent in 1994 to 3.2 percent in 1998.

• Proalcool, the fuel substitution after the oil shock

  Brazil answered the 1973 oil shock by mandating ethanol blending and building a national fuel alcohol industry, taking production from 580 thousand cubic metres in 1975 to 38,199 in 2025, and from 2003 flex-fuel engines moved the choice to the driver.

• The Convertibility Plan, and its collapse

  Argentina ended hyperinflation by fixing the peso to the dollar by law in April 1991, taking annual inflation from 4,923 percent in 1989 to 3.9 percent in 1994, and the regime held until it collapsed in the 2001-2002 crisis.

• Kurzarbeit in the 2008-2009 crisis

  Germany answered the 2008-2009 collapse in manufacturing orders by paying firms to cut hours instead of jobs, and short-time work covered 1.44 million workers at the May 2009 peak, about 5 percent of insured employment, while unemployment barely rose.

• The 2001 stabilisation, and its unwinding

  Turkey answered its 2001 banking collapse with central bank independence, bank restructuring and fiscal rule, taking inflation from 54.4 percent in 2001 to 8.6 percent in 2004, and after 2018 the same framework was overridden until inflation reached 72.3 percent in 2022.

• Telebras, the telecom system that was dismantled

  Created in 1972, Telebras coordinated Brazil's state telecom system until its 1998 privatisation, when 54 concessionaires were split out and the state moved from operating the network to regulating and universalising service.

• Estonian Defence League, national defence rebuilt after independence

  The Estonian Defence League was re-established in February 1990, before the country regained independence, and operates as a voluntary national defence organisation under the Ministry of Defence with territorial units and its own training structure.

• Korea Internet and Security Agency, a consolidated digital authority

  Korea established the Korea Internet and Security Agency in July 2009 by integrating three predecessor organisations, giving the country one public body for internet development, security and international information technology cooperation.

• Childcare benefits administration, and the recovery after institutional failure

  The Netherlands' tax administration put tens of thousands of childcare-benefits parents into debt between 2004 and 2019; by February 2026 the recovery operation had recognized more than 43,000 parents as harmed among about 69,000 applicants and guaranteed each recognized parent at least €30,000.

• National Police, one corps from twenty-five regional forces

  On 1 January 2013 the Netherlands merged 25 autonomous regional police corps and the national KLPD into one organisation with ten regional units, a national unit and a shared Police Services Centre, centralising specialist capacity while retaining local teams.

• DigiD Machtigen, delegated access to public services

  The Netherlands built delegated authority into its public-service login so a family member, carer or adviser can act for someone else without taking their password; in 2024 DigiD Machtigen handled 15,563,897 queries from 798 connected services at 99.84 percent availability against a 99.5 percent norm.

• DigiNotar, a certificate breach that forced a trust-chain reset

  The Netherlands ended DigiNotar's PKIoverheid service after the 2011 breach generated at least 531 forged certificates; 333 could be revoked and the government tightened certificate requirements, role division and supervision after the incident.

• Programmatic Approach to Nitrogen, and the permitting reversal

  The Netherlands operated the Programmatic Approach to Nitrogen (PAS) from July 2015 until the Council of State invalidated its legal basis in May 2019; by the end of 2023, 2,557 affected PAS reporters had sought permits and only 115 had a recorded solution.

• Cédula digital, an identity service upgraded for mobile use

  In 2024 Colombia's Registraduría deployed version 2.0 of its digital ID app and sent 2,642,775 polycarbonate digital identity cards to offices nationwide while continuing a pilot to refine digital services.

• Victims' reparations, a long-running administrative response to conflict

  In 2024 Colombia's Unidad para las Víctimas ordered 307,619 administrative indemnifications benefiting 285,537 victims, approved 79 collective reparation plans and closed three plans for communities affected by the armed conflict.

• My Number Card, a national identity rail extended into services

  By July 2024 Japan reported 93.08 million My Number Cards held, about 75% of the population; 73.71 million had valid health-insurance-card registrations in June 2024, while 566 businesses used the public-key identity infrastructure.

• Juntos, a conditional-transfer system at national scale

  Peru's Juntos conditional cash-transfer programme, created in 2005 and placed under MIDIS in 2012, operated in 1,885 districts and benefited 793,623 households by August 2024 through SISFOH-targeted support.

• Certified digital signature across public services

  Costa Rica's MICITT reported in October 2023 that more than 60 public institutions used certified digital signatures across more than 100 citizen services, with almost 75,000 certificates issued during that year.

• REDCUDI childcare network and SINIRUBE referrals

  Costa Rica's IMAS reported that its national Childcare and Early Development benefit reached 25,704 children in 2024 with an investment of ₡13.2 billion, while interinstitutional referrals used SINIRUBE to match eligible families to available places.

• Dollarization as an emergency monetary redesign

  Ecuador adopted the US dollar as legal tender in January 2000 during a banking and currency crisis; a Central Bank review reports inflation falling from 96.1% in 2000 to below 8% in 2003 while the new regime removed the exchange-rate tool.

• 120 a los 65 social pension

  Panama's 120 a los 65 programme paid a non-contributory pension to an average of about 123,000 older people per payment during July 2019–June 2024, with B/.890.835 million programmed over the period and a national beneficiary register used to target eligibility.

• Bono Juana Azurduy maternal and child health transfer

  Bolivia's Bono Juana Azurduy opened its 2024 payment round through 47 authorised financial institutions in all 340 municipalities and six Indigenous territories, tying the transfer to prenatal, delivery and early-childhood health checks; the programme reported 1,525,566 pregnant women and 1,783,936 children reached between 2009 and 2023.

• Renta Dignidad non-contributory old-age pension

  Bolivia's Renta Dignidad, created by Law 3791 in 2007 and paid since 2008, reached 1,241,440 beneficiaries in 2024 with Bs5.289 billion disbursed through the national social-security administration.

• Tekoporã Mbarete family-support programme

  Paraguay's Tekoporã Mbarete social-protection programme protected more than 175,000 families nationwide in 2024, paid monthly after a 2023 redesign and reported 95% bankarisation plus georeferencing of 11,316 participating homes.

• SIFEN national electronic invoicing rollout

  Paraguay's tax administration approved 651,894,711 electronic tax documents during 2024 and reported 6,659 electronic billers using the SIFEN system, combining mandatory onboarding for larger firms with the free e-Kuatia'i route for small taxpayers.

• Asignación Universal por Hijo child benefit

  Argentina's Asignación Universal por Hijo (AUH) reached 4,083,987 children and adolescents in June 2024, with 2,324,716 adult titulars receiving the benefit through the national social-security administration and its health, vaccination and education conditions.

• SUBE national electronic fare and subsidy rail

  Argentina's SUBE system distributed more than five million cards and recorded about 6.7 million new cards in 2024, while expanding the network to more than 30,000 recharge points and making SUBE Digital available in every locality.

• PhilSys foundational national ID rollout

  The Philippine Statistics Authority reported 90,017,565 people registered to PhilSys by 19 September 2024, or 97.8% of the year's 92 million registration target, with the ID designed for government and private-sector transactions.

• Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (4Ps)

  The Philippines' 4Ps conditional cash-transfer programme reached 4,064,354 households by 30 June 2024 across 41,746 barangays, 148 cities and 1,485 municipalities, with beneficiaries linked to health, education and nutrition conditions.

• Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional, a near-universal health-insurance pool

  Indonesia's Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional (JKN) health-insurance system had 275,413,133 registered participants, 97.50% of the population, by 31 July 2024; 219,263,970 participants were active.

• VNeID national electronic identity

  Vietnam's Ministry of Public Security reported more than 70.2 million electronic-identification accounts issued by January 2024, with VNeID designed to replace paper documents and authenticate public and private services against the national population database.

• Vietnam Social Security health-insurance expansion

  Vietnam Social Security reported 95.523 million people enrolled in health insurance in 2024, covering 94.29% of the population and approaching the country's 95% universal-coverage target for 2025.

• MySejahtera and the national COVID-19 immunisation programme

  Malaysia's national COVID-19 immunisation programme had administered 57,119,777 doses by 31 December 2021, while the MySejahtera application was used to collect 974,134 adverse-event responses for vaccine safety monitoring.

• Universal Coverage Scheme and the 30-baht health system

  Thailand's National Health Security Office has sustained the tax-funded Universal Coverage Scheme since 2002; in fiscal 2023 it covered more than 47.2 million people and contracted 17,247 public and private health units to provide care.

• National Digital ID framework

  Thailand's Digital ID Framework aligned government and private identity providers around common standards in its 2022–2024 first phase; the Electronic Transactions Development Agency reports at least 113 million users across the major ThaiD, Tang Rat, Paotang and NDID platforms and services.

• Cl@ve shared digital identity

  Spain built Cl@ve as a common public-sector platform for identification, authentication and electronic signatures; the Spanish Tax Agency reported 20.867 million taxpayer identifiers enrolled in Cl@ve Móvil by 31 December 2024, including 12.323 million citizens active in the app.

• mObywatel digital ID wallet

  Poland made the mDowód digital identity document in the mObywatel app legally equivalent to the physical identity card inside Poland; the Ministry of Digital Affairs reports that eight million people use the document, which can also support PESEL blocking and other public-service interactions.

• Rodzina 500+ and 800+ child-benefit delivery

  Poland's ZUS-administered child-benefit system has paid support since 2016 and moved applications and payments online; by November 2023, the government reported nearly seven million children reached and almost PLN255 billion transferred, before the monthly benefit rose from 500 to 800 złoty in January 2024.

• BankID federated electronic identity

  Sweden's bank-issued BankID became a shared identity layer for public and private services: in 2024 it handled 7.6 billion identification or signature transactions for 8.6 million users across 7,500 connected services, with 99.99% availability.

• 1177 national health portal and helpline

  Sweden's regions and municipalities run the 1177 national health hub through Inera, combining a common website, logged-in care services and the nationwide nurse helpline; 1177.se recorded just over 260 million visits in 2021.

• MyGovID single sign-on for public services

  Ireland built MyGovID as a reusable online identity for welfare, tax, transport, education and childcare services; the 2025 Digital Decade country report records more than 2.7 million verified accounts in December 2024, close to 65% of adults.

• National Asset Management Agency crisis workout

  Ireland created NAMA in response to the property and banking crisis, acquired distressed loans and worked them down through asset sales and development; by the end of 2023 it had generated €47.7 billion in cash and transferred more than €4.25 billion to the Exchequer while preparing an orderly wind-down.

• Salário mínimo and its permanent revaluation rule

  Brazil's Congress and president established a permanent annual valorização do salário mínimo in Law 14.663/2023, setting the national floor at R$1,320 from May 2023 and linking later adjustments to INPC inflation plus real GDP growth from two years earlier.

• eNaira, a national rollout with an adoption gap

  By June 2024, the Central Bank of Nigeria reported 28.46 million eNaira customers onboarded but only 197,041 active wallets, showing that the national CBDC rollout had not converted broad registration into sustained use.

• Bitcoin Law, and its 2025 rollback

  El Salvador's 2025 reform made private-sector Bitcoin acceptance voluntary, limited the law to private participation and repealed Articles 4, 8 and 9 of the 2021 Bitcoin Law.

• Chave Móvel Digital and Portugal's digital identity layer

  Portugal's digital-government platform reported 4.4 million active Chave Móvel Digital credentials and 141 million authentications by 23 October 2025, with 490 entities using Autenticação.gov.

• Empresa na Hora and the one-stop company registry

  Portugal's IRN reports 369,447 societies created through Empresa na Hora over its first 20 years; the service is available at more than 200 posts and averages 41 minutes from formation to registration.

• Simplex and LabX, a standing simplification-and-experimentation loop

  AMA's 2022 activity report records 48 Simplex administrative-simplification measures, 24 PRR and modernisation milestones executed, and 62 innovation, participation and simplification activities across the agency's portfolio.

• Gauteng e-tolls, and their cancellation after public resistance

  South Africa operated Gauteng's e-toll system from December 2013 until the government withdrew the toll declaration effective 11 April 2024, ending urban e-toll charging after roughly 10.4 years.

• COFEPRIS digital regulatory procedures

  Mexico's medicines and health-products regulator COFEPRIS completed 509,921 procedures entirely online with traceability by 5 September 2024, replacing paper hand-offs for a large share of its regulated users.

• PROSPERA, and its replacement by a new scholarship authority

  Mexico abolished the 2014 decree creating PROSPERA on 31 May 2019 and ordered its people, assets and budget to transfer to the new Benito Juárez scholarship coordination within 90 days.

• The 1997 Canada Pension Plan financing reform

  In December 1993 the Chief Actuary projected that the pay-as-you-go contribution rate would reach 14.2% by 2030 and that the fund would run out by 2015. The federal and provincial governments agreed a reform package in 1997. It took effect on 1 January 1998, raised the combined contribution rate in steps to 9.9% by 2003, replaced pay-as-you-go financing with steady-state funding and invested net cash flows through the CPP Investment Board. The 2024 valuation puts the minimum sustaining rate at 9.19% from 2034, below the legislated 9.9%, with assets of $651 billion.

• Tarea Ordenamiento's single exchange rate, and its fragmentation

  On 1 January 2021 Cuba's government replaced its dual-currency system with a single exchange rate of 24 pesos per dollar for the whole economy. By 1 October 2026 the Central Bank of Cuba published three official dollar rates, of 24, 120 and 689 pesos.

• Covid-19 bridging credits

  The Swiss Federal Council adopted an emergency ordinance on 25 March 2020 and, through 125 banks including PostFinance under federal guarantee, granted 137,870 Covid-19 credits worth CHF 16.9 billion between 26 March and 31 July 2020, with 76,034 applications submitted in the first eight days.

• JobKeeper Payment

  Australia's Treasury designed, Parliament legislated and the tax office began paying the JobKeeper wage subsidy just over five weeks after its announcement on 30 March 2020, and in its first phase it supported on average around 925,000 businesses and 3.6 million individuals each month before ending on 28 March 2021.

• Quédate en Casa emergency cash transfer

  Announced on 25 March 2020 and paying from April, the Dominican government's Quédate en Casa transfer was built on the existing SIUBEN registry and PROSOLI payment system and, by the president's report to the Senate of 10 July 2020, reached more than 1.6 million households, 780,000 of them new to social assistance.

• Bono Familia, the COVID-19 emergency cash transfer

  Guatemala's Ministry of Social Development (MIDES) made the first Bono Familia payments in May 2020, two months after the pandemic emergency was declared. By December 2020 the programme had reached 2.7 million beneficiaries, 21 times the 128,036 beneficiaries of the regular Bono Social cash transfer in 2019.

• Plan Panamá Solidario, Vale Digital

  Panama's government created the Plan Panamá Solidario digital voucher during the 2020 COVID-19 closures, reaching 90,492 people in its first month (April 2020), 458,662 in May and a peak of 949,343 in November 2020, then tapered it as employment returned and ended it in 2023.

• Jobs Support Scheme and the four 2020 Budgets

  Singapore's Ministry of Finance introduced the Jobs Support Scheme in the Unity Budget of 18 February 2020, raised and extended it through the Resilience, Solidarity and Fortitude Budgets, the fourth of them presented on 26 May 2020, and disbursed $22.6 billion of wage support from April to December 2020.

• National Social Safety Nets Project and the COVID-19 Rapid Response Register

  Nigeria's National Social Safety Nets Coordinating Office built a National Social Register of 15,673,296 households and, during COVID-19, a new Rapid Response Register that captured 2.7 million households, while the project paid targeted cash transfers to 9,666,420 direct beneficiaries in 37 states between 2017 and its close in December 2022.

• Activité partielle in the 2020 crisis

  France scaled its short-time work scheme (activité partielle) from an industrial instrument into an economy-wide one in the spring of 2020, placing 8.4 million employees on it at the April 2020 peak and 11.3 million at some point between March 2020 and December 2021.

• Expanded Child Tax Credit of 2021, and its lapse

  The American Rescue Plan, passed in March 2021, expanded the Child Tax Credit and made it payable monthly, and on 15 July 2021 the IRS paid roughly 15 billion dollars to families of nearly 60 million children; Congress did not extend the expansion beyond 2021.

• Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana, the free foodgrain response to COVID-19

  India's Department of Food and Public Distribution, acting on the Garib Kalyan package announced in March 2020, allocated about 121 lakh tonnes of extra free foodgrains to States on 30 March 2020, and States distributed 37.5 lakh tonnes covering about 75 crore beneficiaries in each of April and May 2020.

• Targeted Economic Support Scheme (TESS)

  The Central Bank of the UAE launched the Targeted Economic Support Scheme in March 2020, combining a zero-cost liquidity facility with loan deferrals and capital relief, and by 24 September 2020 more than 300,000 individuals, close to 10,000 SMEs and more than 1,500 private corporates had benefited from the facility.

• Phased exemption of enterprise social insurance contributions, 2020

  China's human resources ministry, finance ministry and tax administration let provinces exempt or halve employer pension, unemployment and work-injury contributions from February 2020 under a notice dated 20 February, and exemptions, reductions, deferrals and rate cuts together reduced contributions by 1.54 trillion yuan between February and the end of 2020.

• Business Finland disruption funding, 2020

  Finland redirected Business Finland, its innovation funding agency, to pay emergency development grants to firms hit by the epidemic, starting from a 700 million euro allocation in the supplementary budget adopted on 26 March 2020, and by 2 September 2020 it had allocated about 912 million euros to 18,770 projects out of 28,715 that applied.

• Partial and flexible unemployment subsidy, 2020-2021

  Uruguay's labour ministry created partial and flexible unemployment-subsidy modalities by resolution after the health emergency of 13 March 2020, and the social security bank (BPS) paid 12,773 beneficiaries under them in April 2020, while total unemployment-subsidy beneficiaries rose from 45,937 in February to a record 185,769 in May.

• Ingreso Familiar de Emergencia, the COVID-19 household transfer

  Chile's Congress created the Ingreso Familiar de Emergencia by Ley 21.230, published on 16 May 2020, and the Ministry of Social Development and Family issued payments to 3,419,351 households in 2020 and to 8,374,718 households in 2021, before the programme ended in 2021.

• Central Bank of Kenya emergency loan restructuring measures

  The Central Bank of Kenya announced emergency measures on 18 and 24 March 2020 that let banks restructure loans performing on 2 March 2020, and by the end of February 2021, days before the measures expired on 2 March 2021, loans of Ksh 1.7 trillion, 57 percent of the banking sector's gross loans, had been restructured.

• Conditional cash transfer shock response, and its suspension after 2022

  Honduras widened its national conditional cash transfer during COVID-19 and Hurricanes Eta and Iota, from 1,153,069 beneficiaries in 2019 to 1,528,030 in 2020, and paid emergency top-ups to 24,891 households outside the roster in late 2020, but after the 2022 reorganisation of the social protection sector payments paused, rural payments resumed only in December 2022 and urban payments only in August 2025, after a three-year suspension.

• Food relief from the national reserve during the July 2021 lockdown

  After the cabinet ordered a lockdown on 14 July 2021, Rwanda's government released part of the national food reserves on 15 July, and between 18 and 30 July local governments delivered about 7,000 tonnes of food door to door to more than 327,000 families in Kigali and eight districts, including 103,000 families not on the initial list.

• Bank of Israel COVID-19 small-business credit programme

  After the Monetary Committee decided on 6 April 2020 to lend banks three-year fixed-rate money for credit to small and micro businesses, the Bank of Israel had NIS 1.2 billion outstanding under the programme by 30 April 2020 and NIS 28.1 billion by 31 March 2021.

• Floating the birr, July 2024

  The National Bank of Ethiopia floated the birr on 29 July 2024, and by 20 September the former official rate had moved from 57.8 to an indicative 119.2 birr per US dollar while the parallel-market spread over it fell from 96 percent to around 5 percent.

• Ehsaas Emergency Cash

  Pakistan's government launched Ehsaas Emergency Cash in early April 2020 on BISP's existing payment and registry systems and had paid US$464 million to 6.4 million beneficiaries by 30 April 2020, reaching 15 million beneficiaries in all.

• Takaful and Karama cash transfer programme

  Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity launched the Takaful and Karama cash transfers in early 2015 and expanded coverage from an initial 1.5 million to 4.675 million households (about 17 million people) by project close in 2024, revising the eligibility threshold and adding top-ups in response to COVID-19 and later inflation, while the cash transfer budget rose from EGP 3.5 billion in 2015 to EGP 41 billion in 2024.

• Targeted Subsidy Reform cash transfer, and its erosion

  Iran's government replaced universal fuel and bread subsidies with a universal cash transfer of 455,000 rials (about US$40) per person per month from late 2010, then left the transfer unindexed, so that by 2019 its purchasing power had fallen to less than US$6 per person before a top-up was added in late 2019.

• Fuel subsidy removal, and its erosion

  Angola's government removed gasoline and diesel subsidies by raising retail prices at the end of 2015, but subsidies returned as costs rose, reaching 3.7 percent of GDP in 2023 from 1.5 percent in 2019. A second reform raised gasoline prices 87.5 percent in June 2023, but the kwanza's depreciation took the gasoline subsidy from 39 percent of the market price in June back to 65 percent by October 2023.

• Tosika Fameno, the COVID-19 urban emergency cash transfer

  Madagascar's social protection agency FID designed the Tosika Fameno emergency cash transfer after the March 2020 urban lockdown, registered almost 200,000 households in about 12 days, made the first payment four weeks after the lockdown began, and reached more than 368,000 urban households in ten cities with 100,000 ariary payments.

• Wage Assistance Scheme and Self-Employed Assistance Scheme, paid by the MRA

  Mauritius made its revenue authority, the MRA, a payer of COVID-19 income support in March 2020, and by end June 2020 the MRA had disbursed Rs 9,985 million under the Wage Assistance Scheme (Rs 7,603 million) and the Self-Employed Assistance Scheme (Rs 2,382 million) to some 500,000 workers and self-employed people, after receiving 176,000 online SEAS applications within 10 days of the lockdown.

• Child Grants Programme drought top-ups, 2020

  After Lesotho declared a drought emergency in October 2019, the government and the World Bank restructured the Social Assistance Project in January 2020 to reallocate US$7.4 million, and between February and September 2020 the Ministry of Social Development paid more than 40,000 Child Grants Programme households a LSL 500 monthly top-up for six months and added about 10,000 new households, which it kept on the programme at its own cost.

• COVID-19 Urban Cash Intervention, and its slow payment

  Malawi declared a State of Disaster over COVID-19 on 20 March 2020 and enrolled 194,762 eligible urban households in a three-month cash transfer in four cities, but first payments came only after January 2021, and by 30 June 2021 just 32,000 households, 16 percent, had received all three payments while 29 percent had received none.

• Bank of Uganda COVID-19 credit relief and loan restructuring

  The Bank of Uganda gave supervised financial institutions exceptional permission to restructure the loans of borrowers hit by COVID-19 from 1 April 2020, and banks restructured UGX 2.3 trillion of loans in April 2020 alone and UGX 5.9 trillion by July 2020, approving 893,018 of 895,241 applications.

• Burkin-Naong-Sa Ya adaptive cash transfers for COVID-19 and the lean season

  Burkina Faso's national safety net programme (Burkin-Naong-Sa Ya) paid three rounds of FCFA 20,000 adaptive cash transfers to over 42,800 people between May and September 2020 in response to COVID-19, including 21,160 vendors from temporarily closed markets, and later raised the lean-season transfer from FCFA 20,000 to FCFA 45,000 in 2022 to align it with the food security response, paying three extra monthly payments to over 763,700 people in IPC3+ areas over the 2021 to 2023 lean seasons.

• Programme de transferts monetaires productifs (PTMP), government-funded COVID-19 expansion

  In response to COVID-19, the government of Cote d'Ivoire used its own budget to enrol a fourth cohort of 100,000 households (80,000 urban, 20,000 rural) in December 2020 into the World Bank supported productive cash transfer programme, through the programme's existing targeting, enrolment and digital payment systems, taking it to 227,000 households and over 1.3 million people.

• Lisungi emergency cash transfers for COVID-19

  The Republic of Congo's Ministry of Social Affairs and the Lisungi programme unit paid one-off emergency cash transfers of about US$82 to more than 206,800 mostly urban households hit by COVID-19 by April 2022, above a target of 200,000, while the social registry used to target them grew to more than 830,000 households and 95 percent of the transfers were paid digitally.

• Domestic Debt Exchange Programme, December 2022 to February 2023

  After losing market access and requesting IMF support in July 2022, Ghana's government launched a domestic debt exchange on 5 December 2022 covering all medium- and long-term local-currency government, Daakye and ESLA bonds, and settled it on 21 February 2023 with 85 percent of the face value of bonds held by investors other than pension funds exchanged, giving almost GHS 50 billion of cash debt relief in 2023.

• Nafa Quick, the COVID-19 cash transfer carved out of the Nafa programme

  The Gambia's government had its new social safety net project restructured within three months of the pandemic (restructuring dated 9 June 2020) to create Nafa Quick, which between July and October 2020 paid two transfers of GMD 3,000 to 78,359 rural households in 30 districts, against a target of 60,000, with all payments made before the end of the lean season.

• Programme Gouvernemental de Transferts Monetaires d'Urgence COVID-19 (PGTMU)

  Mali's government launched its own emergency COVID-19 cash transfer programme in 2021, paying one-off transfers to 400,000 poor households across the country through the targeting and payment systems built by the Jigisemejiri safety net project, and kept it running in 2022, but only FCFA 42 billion of the FCFA 100 billion budgeted was disbursed because of the political crisis.

• Sudan Family Support Programme (Thamarat), and its halt after the October 2021 coup

  After Sudan cut fuel subsidies and unified its exchange rate in February 2021, the transitional government's Sudan Family Support Programme began paying cash in March 2021 and by 25 October 2021 had registered about 2.7 million families and paid about 30.6 billion Sudanese pounds to 1.4 million families, about 4.7 million people, before all activities, including cash delivery, were halted after the military takeover of that day.

• COVID-19-Kurzarbeit, 2020 to 2021

  Austria's social partners drafted a COVID-19 short-time work model on 13 and 14 March 2020, the AMS adopted its directive on 18 March and the ministers approved it on 19 March, three days after the first lockdown began, and in 2020 113,771 firms with 1.25 million employees used the scheme, against 508 firms in 2009.

• Lønkompensation, the 2020 wage compensation scheme

  Denmark's government, employers and unions agreed a wage compensation scheme on 14 March 2020, the Danish Business Authority opened applications 11 days later on 25 March and decided about 90 percent of applications within 30 days, paying DKK 12.7 billion in the first phase (March to August 2020) on 66,631 applications from 34,042 firms.

• Chômage temporaire corona, 2020

  Belgium's National Employment Office treated every COVID-19 work stoppage as temporary unemployment for force majeure and paid allowances to 939,532 workers for March 2020 and 1,117,133 for April, when 1,221,412 workers, 35.3 percent of private and contractual employees, were declared temporarily unemployed; almost 1.4 million received at least one payment during 2020.

• Cassa integrazione con causale Covid-19, 2020

  Italy's Cura Italia decree of 17 March 2020 created wage supplementation with a Covid-19 cause across ordinary CIG, the solidarity funds and CIG in deroga, and INPS recorded 5.27 million beneficiaries in April 2020 and 2.8 billion authorised hours from March to August, but about 83 percent of firms asked INPS to pay workers directly and the institute's own report records the resulting delay in payments for the first period.

• Antivirus job retention programme, 2020 to 2022

  The Czech government approved the Antivirus employment support programme on 31 March 2020, with costs eligible from 12 March, and the Labour Office paid CZK 51.2 billion through it from 2020 to 2022 to almost 71,000 employers for 1.2 million employees.

• Prvá pomoc (First Aid) job retention scheme, 2020 to 2022

  Slovakia's government approved the labour ministry's job retention scheme on 31 March 2020, labour offices began accepting applications on 6 April with support backdated to 13 March, and over two years the scheme paid almost EUR 2.5 billion to 176,000 employers and self-employed people, 5.7 million monthly payments covering more than 770,000 employees.

• Potpore za očuvanje radnih mjesta (job preservation grants), 2020

  The governing board of the Croatian Employment Service decided on 20 March 2020 to introduce job preservation grants for employers hit by COVID-19, the service began implementing them on 23 March, taking applications online, and in 2020 it paid HRK 7.70 billion to 109,431 employers covering 697,126 workers on 225,390 applications.

• eSupport one-off 6,500 hryvnia payment to workers in combat regions, March 2022

  After Russia's full-scale invasion on 24 February 2022, Ukraine's Cabinet allocated UAH 21,450 million for a one-off eSupport payment by Resolution 199 of 4 March 2022, opened applications in the Diia app on 8 March to insured employees and sole proprietors in regions with active fighting, paid the first 6,500 hryvnia transfers on 21 March, and by 27 March had paid 2.7 million people UAH 17.9 billion against 4 million applications.

• State-paid technical unemployment indemnity in the 2020 state of emergency

  Two days after the state of emergency was declared on 16 March 2020, Romania's Government made the unemployment insurance budget pay 75 percent of base salary to employees whose contracts were suspended (Emergency Ordinance 30 of 18 March 2020), and by mid-June 2020 the employment agency ANOFM had approved the indemnity for 2,067,970 employees and paid RON 2,937 million, with 241,453 employer requests approved within the legal deadline and 61 late.

• Automatic loan repayment moratorium, March 2020

  On 18 March 2020 Hungary's Government introduced a repayment moratorium until the end of 2020 that applied automatically to household and corporate loans disbursed before that date, and by June 2020 about 1.6 million of the roughly 2.7 million household borrowers used it on at least one loan, while 44 percent of corporate loans outstanding were in moratorium at the end of the second quarter.

• Three minimum wages paid to private employers in the 2020 state of emergency

  After the state of emergency of 15 March 2020, Serbia's Government presented a EUR 5.1 billion economic package on 31 March that included paying micro, small and medium firms one minimum wage per employee for three months if they cut staff by no more than 10 percent, and on 7 May 2020 the Ministry of Finance paid about RSD 32 billion as the first minimum wage for 1.055 million employees of 232,000 businesses.

• The 60/40 employment retention measure, 2020 to 2021

  Bulgaria's National Social Security Institute paid employers 60 percent of the wages and contributions of staff kept on during the COVID-19 emergency under Council of Ministers Decree No. 55 of 2020, starting with 68 employers and 1,065 employees on 15 April 2020, and by 4 March 2021 the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy reported BGN 884 million paid under the measure and 300,000 jobs kept.

• AZN 190 monthly allowance to people who lost work, April to June 2020

  After Azerbaijan's first COVID-19 case on 28 February 2020 and the first lockdown in March, the government paid a monthly allowance of AZN 190 to 600,000 unemployed citizens, formal and informal, from April to June 2020, and in 2020 also granted targeted social assistance to 9,000 newly poor families without the usual household assessment and extended expired assistance for 9,408 households.

• Temporary unemployment benefit and one-off support for the self-employed, 2020

  Georgia, which had no unemployment benefit, announced a temporary GEL 200 monthly benefit for laid-off formal workers and a one-off payment for self-employed and informal workers on 24 April 2020, a month after declaring a state of emergency, and by September 2021 had paid 231,487 unemployed people and 307,236 self-employed people.

• National Aid Fund temporary cash transfers to informal workers, 2020

  Jordan's National Aid Fund reused the Takaful cash-transfer platform after the March 2020 curfew, opened online registration for ten days in mid-April and had paid about 150,000 newly identified households by 10 May 2020, and 237,000 households had received three months of temporary cash support by March 2021.

• KZT 42,500 income-loss payment during the 2020 state of emergency

  During the March to May 2020 state of emergency, Kazakhstan's government paid people who lost income because of business closures and lockdown KZT 42,500 per person per month, and about 4 million people received the payment.

• Emergency Social Safety Net (AMAN), and its slow start

  Lebanon's emergency cash transfer for the economic collapse that began in 2019 was approved by the World Bank in January 2021, rewritten by Parliament in March 2021 and declared effective only in July 2021, so that in October 2021 the number of households receiving basic cash transfers still stood at its 15,153 baseline against a target of 147,000; the programme later reached 158,770 households by March 2025.

• Tadamon emergency cash transfers to informal workers, 2020

  Morocco created a Special Pandemic Fund in March 2020 and, through its Tadamon budget line, paid emergency cash transfers of MAD 800 to 1,200 to households of informal workers, reaching 4.2 million households in the first wave in April 2020 and 5.45 million across the first and second waves, for a total of MAD 16.15 billion by October 2020.

• One-off COVID-19 payments to families with children, 2020

  Russia's government adopted rules on 11 May 2020, the day the President announced it, for a one-off payment of 10,000 rubles per child aged 3 to 16, applied for through the state services portal, and on the first day of payment, 1 June 2020, the Pension Fund paid it for 15.3 million children, more than 150 billion rubles.

• AMEN Social emergency transfers, 2020

  After the March 2020 lockdown, Tunisia's government announced in April 2020 a vertical and horizontal expansion of the AMEN Social programme: a TND 50 top-up for two months to all 260,000 poor households, two TND 200 transfers to 450,000 vulnerable households on the subsidised health card, and a one-off TND 200 transfer to 300,000 further vulnerable households enrolled through a new simplified platform.

• COVID-19 low-income family allowances and unemployment benefits, 2020

  Uzbekistan's government expanded its COVID-19 unemployment support from a one-off to multiple benefits, which the World Bank followed by restructuring its emergency project on 12 August 2020, and with that financing had paid US$50.77 million in low-income family allowances to more than 1,000,000 families and US$0.65 million in unemployment benefits to 19,700 people by 1 January 2021.

• COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme

  Cabinet agreed a 12-week wage subsidy on 16 March 2020, the Government announced it on 17 March, and the Ministry of Social Development paid employers on average within three and a half days of an application, paying more than NZ$13 billion across three stages by the end of December 2020.

• COVID-19 Allocation of Resources for Employees (CARE) programme

  From March 2020 the Government of Jamaica built the CARE programme on its PATH cash transfer and tax registration systems, paying cash transfers to 458,295 beneficiaries (183,326 men and 274,969 women) for job and income losses and a COVID-19 PATH grant to about 266,100 PATH beneficiaries within the first year of the pandemic.

• COVID-19 frontloading of old age, widow and disability allowances

  Bangladesh's Department of Social Services paid old age, widow and disability allowance entitlements early from 25 March 2020 to 30 June 2020, reaching about 4.36 million beneficiaries through its digital government-to-person payment system, and the World Bank reimbursed US$165.84 million within 16 days of the government's July 2020 request.

• COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan household transfers, and their halt after the 2021 coup

  Under its COVID-19 Economic Relief Plan, Myanmar's government distributed food to about 5.4 million households in April 2020 and cash transfers that had reached about 6 million vulnerable households by November 2020, and the World Bank reported in July 2021 that these transfers had come to a sudden halt after the military takeover of 1 February 2021.

• Social insurance contribution exemption, April to September 2020

  Mongolia's parliament passed the Law on Exemptions for Social Insurance Contributions and Assistance from the Unemployment Insurance Fund on 9 April 2020, waiving contributions retroactively from 1 April to 30 September 2020 for voluntary contributors and affected employers and workers, and 152,475 workers had received relief under the World Bank-financed part of the measure by 31 December 2020.

• Emergency cash transfer top-ups after the 2022 default

  After Sri Lanka suspended external debt service on 12 April 2022, the government topped up Samurdhi and categorical cash transfers to Rs 5,000 to 7,500 per family per month from May to December 2022 for 2.5 million existing recipients and 0.8 million waitlisted recipients, raising spending on these programmes to Rs 142 billion in 2022.

• Nepal Rastra Bank COVID-19 refinance and loan relief

  Nepal Rastra Bank's monetary policy of 17 July 2020 expanded its subsidised refinance facility to five times the available fund for COVID-19 affected businesses, and by mid-July 2021 Rs 148.75 billion had been approved to 48,890 borrowers, against Rs 7.49 billion of refinance outstanding a year earlier.

• COVID-19 Salary Relief Grant and income support

  After restricting non-essential activity in March 2020, the Government of Trinidad and Tobago paid a Salary Relief Grant of TT$1,500 a month for three months through the National Insurance Board, spending TT$226.3 million on it in fiscal 2020 against a TT$490 million allocation, and the Ministry of Social Development and Family Services paid income support to 46,533 people outside the national insurance scheme.

• Work permits for Syrian refugees under the Jordan Compact, and the end of the fee waiver

  After the February 2016 London conference, Jordan's Ministry of Labour opened formal work permits to Syrian refugees and waived their fees. Annual permits issued rose from 36,788 in 2016 to a peak of 90,152 in 2023. In July 2024 the waiver was not extended for flexible or employer-sponsored permits, and issuance fell to 54,586 in 2024.

Every delivery under adaptability