PESHAWAR: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has started providing loans for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Cities Improvement Project, the biggest project in the history of the province.
Immediately after the ADB released fund, the KP government released Rs248 million to the project on Monday.
According to sources in the Finance Department, an amount of Rs240 million was provided by the Asian Development Bank to the provincial government, which is now being provided to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Cities Improvement Project and shall be used in accordance with the details of items and expenses included in the PC-1 of the project.
The provincial government has signed a loan agreement for the provision of clean drinking water, sanitation services and basic facilities in five major cities in the province – Peshawar, Mardan, Abbottabad, Swat, and Kohat – in the first phase of cities Improvement Project. In the second phase, these services will be further improved in Bannu, Dera Ismail Khan, and Peshawar BRT services.
According to sources, the provincial government will receive a loan of 1 billion US dollars from the Asian Development Bank for both phases of this project. After the increase in the value of Dollar, the the government asked the ADP to provide the loan in Euros which was approved.
The project is the biggest project in the history of the province started on loan from ADB. It will also be the largest loan taken for any project in the history of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
The project aims to ensure the provision of clean drinking water in these cities, improvement of drainage system, water treatment plants to make drainage water reusable, establishment of dumping sites including waste disposal and construction of public parks. The aim is to improve the quality of life of people living in these cities.
