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The 3,300-km East-West corridor is one of the three key highways the Government has earmarked for a radical $13-billion upgradation programme to be completed by 2007.

NEW DELHI, April 8

THE Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday approved technical assistance grant of $5,00,000 to help prepare a National Highway Project which will cover priority section of the East-West corridor through three States - Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

According to a statement issued in Manila by the regional development bank, the Government of India will contribute $1,50,000 towards the technical assistance, which is due for completion by September 2003.

The National Highways are managed by two agencies - the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI), which manages a quarter of the system, and the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways which is responsible for the rest.

The 3,300-km East-West corridor is one of the three key highways the Government has earmarked for a radical $13-billion upgradation programme to be completed by 2007.

The others include the 6,000-km `Golden Quadrilateral' and the 4,000-km North-South corridor.

The bank's senior transport economist, Mr Shunsho Tsukada, said: "India's economy is suffering from a chronic capacity shortage in the highways system. As the country's transport shifts increasingly from bulk to smaller size cargoes, improvement and expansion of the road networks is important."

The country's 3.3 million km of roads remain the dominant means of transport, accounting for 68 per cent of freight and 73 per cent of the passenger.

Despite the high volume of traffic, only two per cent of the National Highway system is of four-lane or higher standard. About 39 per cent of the highway roads are single-lane, while nearly 60 per cent have two lanes.

Mr Tsukada said that ADB is taking a programme approach in the Indian road sector, pursuing its objectives in an evolutionary way through multi-year lending operation rather than on a project-by-project basis.

This means that it would be possible to standardise and simplify the project preparation and processing with time.

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