India may get $3 bn WB loan for road dev

India may get $3 billion loan from the World Bank for development of roads in the country in the next 3-6 months, a senior Transport Ministry official said today.

"The Department of Economic Affairs has forwarded the request for the loan to the World Bank and we can expect to get it in 3-6 months' time, after the institution completes its due diligence," the official told PTI.

The government has sought loan for converting 6,372-km of 1-lane highways to 2-lane out of the total 19,702 km single lane highways in the country under National Highways Development Project (NHDP) Phase IV.

However, the mode of repayment of this 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 this money anyway for the same purpose of building 2-lane roads," the official said.

Another method of loan repayment can also be levying toll on these 2-lane roads but it has never been done before on concerns whether people would accept it, the official added.