ISLAMABAD, Jan 14: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) has offered Pakistan and India its assistance to develop their interconnection road infrastructure, border processing facilities and exchange of energy resources as part of its sub-regional financing strategy.

Mr M. Ali Shah, country representative of the ADB, told a news briefing here on Wednesday that the bank was currently holding discussions with Pakistan government on the subject besides the expansion of cooperation among the Saarc countries in the fields of tourism, trade and cultural attractions.

He said after the successful Saarc summit in Islamabad early this month, the ADB was looking into various options as to how to assist sub-regional countries, particularly India and Pakistan.

India and Pakistan, he further said, could exchange energy resources, particularly electricity. This, he explained, meant that a country should purchase electricity from the other from an area where it was in surplus and sell in another area where it was in deficit. There were many such points in both the countries, he added.

Indian side, he said, had also "unofficially" shown its willingness to be part of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan gas pipeline, for which the ADB would provide political risk guarantee as Pakistan would be ensuring guarantee and security of the pipeline. "They (India) have taken a guarded position with very positive indications," he said.

Mr Shah further said that the Indians were giving mixed signals on TAP-gas pipeline before the Saarc summit but now they had said to reconsider the ADB offer to join the project.

He said the ADB was also discussing joint infrastructure projects between India and Pakistan, particularly roads connecting the two countries. The ADB, he further said, would provide border processing facilities at Wagah border on the pattern of the facilities it provided to Pakistan on its eastern borders for the screening of people, vehicles and goods.

The ADB, he said, was already assisting Nepal, Bhutan, the Maldives and India for a joint tourism initiative and Pakistan could also be involved in this move to get advantages of the tourists.

Mr Shah said these issues were currently at the dialogue stage so that ADB could move very fast for implementation when the two countries resolved their disputes.

To a question, he said Pakistan faced tremendous challenges to compete with India, China and Bangladesh with the intensification of the globalisation in many fields and structural changes would have to be made to cope with the situation.

He said Pakistan was not on the high growth area of technical intensive and human resource development but it would not be a loser if it improved in this area in the short-to-medium term.

He said Pakistan was very strong in the field of textiles but it would have to seriously look into agricultural diversification, like horticulture, food, fruit and meat processing.