India, World Bank sign USD 500 million project to build Green national Highway Corridors

The Indian government on December 22, 2020, signed a loan pact of $500 million with the World Bank for the development of safe and green national highway corridors in Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh.

The agreement between the Indian government and the World Bank was signed by an additional secretary, Department of economic affairs, CS Mohapatra, and World Bank acting country director of India, Sumila Gulyani. The loan has been granted with a tenor of 18.5 years along with a 5 years grace period.

The Government of India and the World Bank today signed a $500 million project to build safe and green national highway corridors in the states of Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.

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Green National Highways Corridors Project:

The Project will be supporting the Road Transport and Highways ministry in the construction of 783 km of highways by combining safe and green technology designs such as industrial byproducts, local and marginal materials, and other bioengineering solutions.

Objectives:

•  The project will be providing efficient transportation for road users in the four major states.

•  It will connect people with the market and services, it will help lower Greenhouse gas emissions, and will promote efficient use of construction materials and water for reducing the depletion of scarce natural resources.

•  The project will also widen and strengthen the existing structures by constructing drainage facilities, new pavements, bypasses. It will also improve junctions and introduce road safety measures.

Ensuring climate-resilient infrastructure:

For ensuring that the infrastructure investments are climate-resilient, under the project the disaster risk management of 5000 km of the national highway network will be done along with the assistance of the union ministry of Road Transport and Highways. Under this, there will be climate resilience aspects in the implementation and project design.

The project will also be supporting the analytics for mapping the freight volume as well as the movement pattern on the national highway network, will provide innovative logistics solutions, and will identify constraints.