World Bank sanctions $250 mn loan for India’s road safety programme

The World Bank on Monday sanctioned a $250 million loan for the Indian government's road safety programme that addresses the high road accident fatality rate in India.

The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development's (IBRD) variable spread loan has an 18 years maturity period, including a grace period of 5.5 years.

The programme is aimed to assist participating states to decrease road crash fatalities and injuries via enhanced road safety management and institutional reform, and results-based interventions on high-risk roads. For post-crash care, it will also bolster emergency medical and rehabilitation services.

India accounts for nearly 10% of all crash-related deaths, with only 1% of the world’s vehicles. Poor households bear a higher proportion of the socio-economic load of road crashes due to loss of income, high medical expenses, and restricted access to social safety nets.

According to a World Bank study, road crashes are evaluated to cost the Indian economy between 5%-7% of gross domestic product (GDP) a year.

Official government data indicate that road accidents in India kill nearly 150,000 people and leave 450,000 people injured each year. Over half of the victims are cyclists, pedestrians, or motorcyclists, and nearly 84% of all fatalities are between the working ages of 18-60 years.

World Bank India acting country director Hideki Mori, told the media that the World Bank’s India Road Safety Project would help the Government of India’s efforts to decrease incidents of road crashes by making efficient institutional mechanisms for safer vehicles, roads, and enforcement in India and bolstering efforts to deliver better on-the-spot care to victims of road collisions. This will help in lowering the impact road crashes have, mainly on the poor, and the economy and human capital, said Mori.

The India State Support Program for Road Safety, funded by the World Bank, will be executed in Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh (AP), Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Telangana, and West Bengal.

The project will concentrate on bolstering and streamlining the management ability of the lead agencies for road safety in these states. The project will set a national harmonised crash database system, the analysis of which will be utilised to build better and safer roads to decrease incidents of road crashes.

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