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New Delhi: India may soon get a $3-billion loan from the World Bank for building roads in the country, road and highways minister Kamal Nath said on Wednesday.
“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 said. 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 back the World Bank loan is through budgetary resources as we would have anyway used that money for building two-lane roads,” a transport ministry official said.Another way could be through tolls on the two-lane roads but it has never been done before, he 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 Centre had sought loan for two laning 6,372-km of highways of the total 19,702-km single lane highways in the country under the National Highways Development Project Phase IV.
Meanwhile, the ministry’s target of developing 20 kms of road per day would be achieved by March, Nath opined. Inaugurating Excon, the fifth international construction equipment and construction technology trade fair in Bangalore, Nath said, “We are building 7-8 kms a day at present compared with 2-2.5 km per day earlier. We will achieve 20 kms per day target by March and will continue to do so consistently.
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