World Bank Firm On Backing Core Sector Projects
The World Bank is committed to an intensive infrastructure development programme in India and is working with state governments to improve their implementation.
The Bank envisions a fairly big programme of infrastructure development in India, said Christopher Hoban, senior highway engineer and point person for the recently signed $350 million loan to the Andhra Pradesh Roads Project.
Hoban said the Andhra project was just the first of many upcoming roads projects.
We do have a plan to help India overcome its bottleneck, Hoban said.
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He pointed out that in the roads sector, New Delhi had made tremendous investments in the past but the focus had been on rural roads rather than on highways. As a result it takes too much time to get across and highways are used mostly by big trucks and not for social travel, he noted.
The investment in infrastructure, Hoban stressed, would not be on just the physical structures, but also on reform of institutions and management capabilities. Already the trend towards employing contractors and the private sector for building instead of the public works department was
picking up, he said.
To gear up to big investment programmes is an enormous challenge, Hoban said.
We are working with government to expand its capacity to implement programmes, he added.
At the states level, Andhra Pradesh was the first to come up with a project
proposal after the signing last November of a $50 million technical assistance agreement to advise and help various Indian states come up with their infrastructure development plans.
The Bank called the poor state of roads in Andhra Pradesh a drag on the states development and said the project was expected to reduce costs of freight and passenger transport and introduce other environmentally-friendly elements