Post-flood infrastructure uplift: ADB agrees to provide $700 million soft loan

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has agreed to provide a soft loan of $700 million for post-flood infrastructure development. This was stated by Dr Kaiser Bengali, advisor to Chief Minister, Sindh on Planning and Development (P&D) at a press conference held at P&D department here on Thursday.
He said the ADB would provide a soft loan of $700 million on 0.5 percent mark-up through LIBOR with a repayment schedule of 32 years. He said the modalities in this regard would be finalised by March 30, 2011. In this regard, the MoU would be signed between ADB and Economic Affair Division of federal government.
He further said the Sindh government would share $405 million for its rehabilitation schemes, of which, around $120 million would be utilised for the improvement of road infrastructure while rest of the amount would be used for irrigation sector. Bengali said the authority concerned had sensed the significance of rehabilitation schemes hence the Sindh government had not only made some 39 schemes in this connection but also allocated Rs 1 billion, which would later be reimbursed through ADB's soft loan.
He said the Sindh government, in collaboration with National Highway, Provincial Highway and District Highway, reviewed road infrastructure across Sindh and suggested several road-alignments under ADB loan within 33 months. He informed that the earthwork of Hyderabad Mirpurkhas dual carriageway has been completed and the bitumen work is in progress, adding that the project would be accomplished by April 2012.
Moreover, he said the Sindh government has also launched seven new highways namely Jacobabad Tutudero road, Khairpur-Benazirabad road, Qazi Ahmad Benazirabad Sanghar Mirpurkhas road, Hyderabad Badin road, Karachi Thatta Badin Mitthi Islamkot road and Hala Sanghar road under public-private partnership, which would be expected to complete by 2014. Bengali appraised that this unprecedented floods affected around 11000 villages, of which, some 3000 villages were considered as big incorporated communities.
The Sindh government has also initiated rehabilitation programme for 43 villages on urgent basis, he said and hoped to complete the rehabilitation work of some 100 villages by the end of current year. Similarly, some 10600 houses would be constructed by United Nation while 2000 houses in Shikarpur, 1000 houses in Thatta and some 50,000 houses across Sindh would be established by Turkish, Iranian governments and private sector, respectively. Meanwhile, he said the Sindh government is striving to provide basic amenity to the inhabitants of Sindh and for the purpose they had planned to install some 1000 water filter plants across Sindh by 2011.