India on Monday signed agreements with the Asian Development Bank for two loans of $250 million each essentially for the country’s infrastructure sector.
One of the ADB loans is for a project that supports India’s National Industrial Corridor Development programme and the other will part-finance the construction of the 82-kilometer Delhi-Meerut Regional Rapid Transit System (RRTS) corridor, according to the statements by the multilateral institution.
The pacts were signed by Juhi Mukherjee, joint secretary in the finance ministry and Hoe Yun Jeong, deputy country director at ADB.
Earlier, ADB had approved a $1.049 billion Multi-tranche Financing Facility (MFF) to support the construction of RRTS.
The project will help the RRTS improve urban mobility, and women and the differently abled will benefit from its economic impact, Mukherjee said.
Passing through the populated sections of the national capital region, the 82-km corridor is aimed at providing fast, safe, and high-capacity commuter transit services, expanding economic and job opportunities by cutting travel time from three-four hours now to about one hour, according to one of the statements.
The other loan of $250 million will continue support to industrial corridor development to make manufacturing more competitive, bolster national supply chains and links with regional and global value chains, and create more and better jobs, according to another ADB statement.
This loan builds on another financing of $250 million approved by the ADB in October 2021 that helped strengthen policy frameworks for India’s National Industrial Corridor Development Programme (NICDP) and develop 11 industrial corridors, it added.
The latest loan will help in the integration of industrial corridors with transport, logistics and urban facilities under the Gati Shakti platform, said Jeong. “It will promote gender equality in manufacturing and corridor development, as well as conduct training and upskilling of workers in industrial corridors,” he added.
