Grant Approved to Prepare Road Projects in Gansu and Sichuan, PRC

MANILA, PHILIPPINES (14 October 2005) - ADB will help prepare an integrated road transport system project in the People's Republic of China (PRC) provinces of Gansu and Sichuan, through a technical assistance (TA) grant of US$800,000.

The TA will help prepare a project to construct a 132-kilometer access-controlled 4-lane expressway that will form the southern section of the Lanzhou-Sichuan corridor in Gansu. The expressway will connect the remote and isolated province with Chengdu and Chongqing, two major growth centers in the southwestern region.

In Sichuan, the TA will help prepare a project that will construct a 138-km access-controlled 4-lane expressway to connect Dazhou and Wanyuan in the eastern section of the province. It will also form part of the eight western development corridors between Arongqi and Beihai that will provide an important link, connecting the northwestern and southwestern regions by 2015.

The planned expressways will run through mountainous terrains, and will involve extensive construction of tunnels and bridges. They will also provide a shorter and safer alternative route to existing roads in the area.

Both proposed projects will also include the construction of local roads to boost accessibility of rural areas.

"The poverty reduction impact of road investments is supported by the results of studies and evaluations of several completed road projects financed by ADB," says Makoto Ojiro, an ADB Principal Project Economist.

"Well-integrated road development helps ensure that the benefits derived from the expressway filter down to the poor. Transport cost savings and time savings, for example, along with an increase in incomes, will be passed on through the transport chain to townships and villages."

Despite considerable investments, the road networks in Gansu and Sichuan are still inadequate and do not provide efficient transport access to markets and social services, such as education and health.

One of the reasons cited for the high poverty incidence in these two provinces is slow economic growth, due partly to inadequate infrastructure.

The proposed project in Gansu will be the second in the province to be funded by ADB, while the one in Sichuan will be the fourth under ADB financing.

Since 1991, ADB has provided 30 loans, totaling nearly $5.6 billion, to finance about 4,100 km of expressways, together with 7,600 km of associated local road networks. Local roads have been included in the scope of road projects to make ADB's interventions in the road sector more pro-poor since 1995.

The PRC Government will contribute $200,000 to the TA's estimated total cost of $1 million. The Gansu Provincial Communications Department and Sichuan Provincial Communications Department are the executing agencies for the respective parts of the TA.

The TA will be carried out over about five months to April 2006.

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