The Government of India and the Asian Development Bank on Tuesday signed a $2 million Project Readiness Financing (PRF) Loan for designing climate resilient urban infrastructure, strengthening institutional capacity and improving municipal resource mobilization in 16 district headquarter towns (DHTs) in Nagaland.
The Union Finance Ministry stated in a release that the signatories to the PRF for the proposed Nagaland Urban Infrastructure Development Project were Rajat Kumar Mishra, Additional Secretary, Department of Economic Affairs in the Ministry of Finance who signed for the Government of India, and Takeo Konishi, Country Director of ADB’s India Resident Mission who signed for ADB.
After signing the Agreement, Mishra said that the facility would support key preparatory activities for the ensuing project aimed at improving urban infrastructure and services in Nagaland to help the state realize its economic potential.
“The ADB financing will ensure high readiness of the ensuing project through preparing an urban sector strategy, undertaking feasibility studies and detailed engineering designs of selected subprojects and building capacity of state level agencies in project implementation, resource mobilization and anchoring reforms,” said Konishi.
Nagaland’s towns and cities face long-term challenges of climate change, lack of basic amenities and poor connectivity. Major transport routes around urban areas are severely affected by landslides during the monsoon season. Urban roads are in poor condition without proper stormwater drainage.
Most cities face acute water shortage and, except Dimapur, have inadequate sewerage or septage management system. All these issues constrain economic development of the state.
The ministry stated that the PRF loan will help design water supply, sanitation, solid waste management and urban roads in 16 DTHs with climate resilient features and improved access to poor and vulnerable.
Capacity building of state agencies will help augment own-resource mobilization by urban local bodies (ULBs), improve their readiness for implementing the ensuing project and initiating sector and institutional reforms, the ministry stated.
