It notes infrastructure bottleneck

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) will raise its funding to US$20 billion during 2018-22 to help accelerate inclusive economic transformation of India.

The multilateral project lender has decided to provide loans up to US$4 billion on annual basis including non-sovereign debt during 2018-22, said ADB Country Director in India Kenichi Yokoyama.

As part of the country strategy 2018-22, annual sovereign funding will increase US$3 billion from US$2 billion while private sector funding would be doubled to US$1 billion, he elaborated.

“The other priority pillars include increasing annual funding to low income states and climate change,” he said.

The India programme will focus on boosting economic competitiveness to create more and well-paid jobs, improved access to infrastructure and services, and addressing climate change and improving climate resilience over these five years.

ADB noted that infrastructure would continue to be a major bottleneck.

The agency has identified an investment shortfall of $230 billion in the current fiscal and will accelerate to 7.4 per cent next fiscal. fii-news.com