August 22, 2003	Friday	Jumadi-us-Sani 23, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Aug 21: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is concerned over the slow progress of nine projects being implemented with its assistance but has offered to increase its annual funding provided that work on the schemes is accelerated, sources told Dawn.

The ADB is providing 53 project loans worth $4.4 billion in various fields. The programmes being implemented slowly include Pakistan Reproductive Health Project, Sector Development Programme, Agriculture Sector Project Loan and Energy Sector Restructuring Programme.

An inter-ministerial meeting, presided over by Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz on Thursday, reviewed the projects assisted by the ADB and discussed acceleration of their implementation and promotion of understanding among the donors, the federation and the provinces.

The meeting concentrated on 38 projects which were earlier categorized as ‘slow moving’ and noted with satisfaction that the percentage of such projects had dropped from 33.3 in 2001 to 17.

ADB Country Representative Marshuk Ali informed the meeting that the bank’s board in its recent meeting had increased allocation for the next three years for Pakistan from $2.4 billion to $2.7 billion.

The board reposed confidence in the reforms being pursued by the government and pledged its support in this regard, he said.

He said the annual ADB assistance to the country would increase from $850 million to $890 million in the next three years.

He said the assistance would increase if implementation of the projects was on track.

He said this year’s ADB assistance to the country amounted to $920 million. He said the bank had extended 53 loans for 38 projects and 67 technical grants.

An official statement said the finance minister stressed the need for developing absorptive capacity to remove bottlenecks in implementation of development projects.

Talking about the slow pace of some projects, the minister said the government could not be complacent and implementation of those plans needed to be accelerated. He said the bank’s regional initiatives for communications networking between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia would have far reaching impact.