The Bank country director for Pakistan, John Wall, announced the package at a press conference here on Wednesday.
It includes $200 million credit from the International Development Agency (IDA), 100 million loan for reconstruction, $130 million additional credit financing for community infrastructure and $40 million for relief work.
John Wall issued a statement of the Bank's president Wolfowitz to the press on the occasion.
According to the statement, Wolfowitz said: "The scale of this disaster is really unimaginable, and the problems that the survivors are facing in worsening weather conditions are frightening."
He said: "We are most encouraged by the resoluteness of the government's response and very eager to do what we can do to help it for rehabilitation and reconstruction work."
The statement added that the amount of the package was a big step but sadly just the first step as everyone would have to do much more. It added that it was important to give the government confidence to address the immediate needs "and as we develop a better idea of the medium-term needs we will work on that as well".
The statement said that the bank's president was extremely encouraged by the way in which the government and the people of Pakistan were approaching their very big development challenges when he visited the country in August last. He said to have the catastrophe piled on top was an enormous extra burden but added that he was confident that Pakistan would meet the challenge, and the bank was ready to do whatever it could do to help the government of Pakistan.
It added that the World Bank also lent its support to an innovative web portal designed to share as much information as possible that can be gathered from the 4,000 villages in the affected areas (LINK).
Responding to various queries John Wall said Pakistan's response to earthquake was highly impressive, but since the scale of devastation was very huge the government efforts to outreach all the affected areas might take some time. He said that Pakistani nation has shown great courage and come forward to help the affectees within few hours of the incident. John Wall said that he had no initial estimate of assistance that the multidonors could offer to Pakistan for rehabilitation and reconstruction work.