ADB to lend $2.65 B to India in 2008

By agencies   |   Thursday, 15 December 2005, 20:30 IST
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MANILA: The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said here that it would increase its lending to India to $2.65 billion in 2008, up from $1.12 billion this year. "The program reflects the continuing priority of upgrading infrastructure... and gives emphasis to agriculture and rural development to create jobs and make the country's growth more broad based," the ADB country director to India, Tadashi Kondo, was said. As part of this loan program, the ADB will "continue to focus its development efforts on relatively weak states such as Chhattisgarh, Jammu and Kashmir, Uttaranchal, and those in the northeast," the bank said in a statement. The multilateral institution said that India was expected to maintain its annual growth of almost seven percent over the next two years "but achieving the government's target of eight percent growth depends critically on upgrading infrastructure as well improving agricultural growth."