World Bank lends $1.7 bn for roads, fighting cyclones

NEW DELHI: The World Bank on Friday pledged $1.72 billion in loans to India, mainly for building 24,000 km of roads in rural areas.

"It is the largest roads project to be approved by the bank," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said after a meeting with Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee in Delhi.

The global lending agency also pledged $255 million to the first phase of a project that aims to mitigate effects of cyclones.

"We see an increased role of the World Bank in recycling global savings to developing countries and emerging markets as one of the approaches to resolve global imbalances," Mukherjee said. The finance minister said he discussed with Zoellick ways to share India’s development experience, expertise and skills with other developing economies.

India’ s quick and adequate fiscal and monetary response helped the economy return to strong growth in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, Mukherjee said, adding that the World Bank also responded quickly and efficiently to the country’s request for an increase in funding.

Zoellick endorsed Mukherjee’s comments saying India was “prudent" in handling the fallout of the global crisis. He said India was showing the world how economic growth can be used to overcome poverty and meet the growing aspirations of a country’s people.
“India has shown the world its ability to recover from the global crisis, and we stand ready to be a partner," Zoellick said. Zoellick said he told the finance minister that the bank's funding and technical resources are to be used quickly to build infrastructure to sustain high growth and overcome the bottlenecks. Earlier on Friday, Zoellick met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.