February 8, 2003	Saturday	Zul Hijjah 6,1423

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LAHORE, Feb 7: The World Bank has announced resumption of soft loans directly to Punjab for programme-based development activities without any conditionalities.

The announcement to this effect was made by World Bank Pakistan acting chief Abid Hassan during a meeting with Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi here on Friday.

The bank had stopped providing loans to the province because of “lack of transparency, unstable political conditions and corruption” some four years ago, official sources informed Dawn.

They said the bank had wound up the multi-million-dollar SAP-I and SAP-II in the recent past for the same reasons.

The sources said the chief minister asked the secretaries to prepare schemes and their costs so that the loans could be obtained at the earliest.

They said the only source of funding for the province had been the Asian Development Bank during these years. But the province was now finding it difficult to seek loans from it for a variety of reasons.

The World Bank official, who led a delegation, extended an almost unlimited loan facility at an interest rate much lower than that charged by the Asian Development Bank, the sources said.

The chief minister asked his team of administrative secretaries to prepare schemes in almost all the sectors, the sources added.

Meanwhile, according to an official handout the chief minister said the World Bank had showed its willingness to provide resources for the mega-development projects relating to the education, health and irrigation sectors and district governments.

He said the provincial government had chalked out a comprehensive programme to carry out development activities in an integrated manner rather than introducing only a few projects.

The chief minister directed the P&D chairman and the finance, irrigation and agriculture secretaries to initiate development plans in collaboration with the World Bank.

He said a major chunk would be allocated for development in the neglected areas. The projects would include 5,000 water courses to better utilize water.

The government would facilitate the farming community regarding the marketing of crops, provision of loans and water at tail-ends besides giving them technical advice on modern farming.

The high-level meeting was attended by Chief Secretary Hafeez Akhtar Randhawa, CM’s Adviser Jehangir Tareen, Planning and Development Board chairman, LDA director-general and secretaries of the education, irrigation agriculture and transport departments.