21.9.16

East Coast Economic Corridor snippets

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved $631 million in loans and grants to develop the first key 800-km of a planned 2,500-km-long East Coast Economic Corridor that will spur development on India's eastern coast and create trade links with South and Southeast Asia. The East Coast Economic Corridor will extend from Kolkata in West Bengal to Tuticorin in Tamil Nadu near the southernmost point of the country .
The Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor of the East Coast Economic Corridor, connecting four economic hubs and nine industrial clusters, will mark the first industrial corridor developed along India's coast. “By combining state-of-the-art industrial clusters, efficient transport, and reliable water and power supplies with a skilled workforce and good business policies, we expect the Visakhapatnam-Chennai industrial corridor to become a favoured investment destination,“ said Manoj Sharma, ADB's principal urban development specialist in south Asia. “We estimate that by 2025, annual industrial output along the corridor will increase four-fold to $64 billion from about $16 billion in 2015, if investment opportunities are maximized over 10 years,“ he said.
ADB's loans and grants comprise a $500 million two tranche loan and grants to build key infrastructure and a $125 million two-tranche loan to help with industrial policies and business promotion.
The government will provide $215 million to the $846 million project. While Andhra Pradesh government will give $1 million as technical assistance, $5 million will come as grant from the multi-donor Urban Climate Change Resilience Trust Fund that is managed by ADB to build climate change resilient infrastructure.

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