$3-bn WB loan for road projects soon: Nath

India may soon get a $3-billion (about Rs 14,000 crore) loan from the World Bank for building roads in the country, Road and Highways Minister Kamal Nath said today.

"The World Bank President Robert B Zoellick is arriving here on December 2 and we are hopeful of getting clearance for $3-billion loan as sought by us for highway projects," Nath told PTI on the sidelines of a press conference today.

The Transport Ministry is working out the cost of various highway projects and may seek more funds from the World Bank during the meet, the minister said.

However, the mode of paying back the loan has not been finalised yet.

"One of the ways to pay the World Bank loan is through budgetary resources as we would have used that money anyway for the same purpose of building two-lane roads," a Transport Ministry official told PTI.

Another way could be through tolls on the two-lane roads but it has never been done before, the official added.

"Two-lane stretches primarily serve common people and are constructed between two highly populated cities. So tolling them could be a problem as toll has never been levied on two-laned roads, though there is a provision for that," the official said.

The government had sought loan for converting 6,372-km of one-lane highways to two-lane out of the total 19,702 km single lane highways in the country under the National Highways Development Project (NHDP) Phase IV.

On formation of Expressways Authority of India (the proposed nodal agency for building expressways for fast, unhindered flow of traffic) Nath said consultants appointed by his Ministry had given their final report and discussions were on with the state governments for finalising it.

"We are in the process of talks with various state governments and other stakeholders for Expressway Authority of India and a final decision would be taken soon," he said.

The government plans to build 18,637 km of expressways in three phases by 2022 and the Transport Ministry in December 2008 had hired a consultancy services for formulating a master plan for the national expressway network in a phased manner by the end of 2022.