ISLAMABAD: The Planning Commission and the World Bank on Friday expressed concern over delays in various projects and consented to remove bottlenecks and expedite approval process at their respective ends.

The World Bank financial support is expected to be one of the key areas on the sidelines of the upcoming visit of Prime Minister Imran Khan to Washington next weekend. Pakistan is expecting the World Bank funding for budgetary support.

At a meeting on Friday, Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Makhdum Khusro Bakhtyar told World Bank’s country director Patchamuthu Illangovan that the PTI government was eagerly looking for launch of some important projects to show its performance to the people and wanted to resolve all bottlenecks in project delays.

He said the government expected the World Bank to expeditiously process various development projects to take them to implementation stage at the earliest. He appreciated the contribution of WB in socio-economic development of Pakistan. “The incumbent government is committed to fast track the various projects being funded by World Bank,” he said.

And official announcement said various infrastructure, clean drinking water, drainage and agriculture related projects being funded by the World Bank came under discussion during the meeting. Referring to K4 (Greater Karachi Water Project) and S3 (Greater Karachi Sewerage Project), the minister said provision of clean drinking water and upgrading drainage system of Karachi were among top priority of the government.

The World Bank has funding pipeline of about $7.5bn for around 40 approved projects at the federal and provincial level. About 12 projects of over a billion dollar have not been receiving planned funding because of procurement issues while almost similar number of projects were facing problems due to staffing issues, particularly the absence of project directors.

Published in Dawn, July 13th, 2019