WASHIGNTON DC, February 21, 2017 – The World Bank’s Board of Executive Directors today approved a US$150 million loan to improve road maintenance in China’s Anhui province.
China has the second-largest road network in the world, totaling 4.46 million kilometers in 2014. In the area of preserving road assets, China faces challenges such as lack of funding and limited commercial sector participation, as well as inefficient resource allocation and utilization in road asset maintenance planning, programming, and budgeting.
These issues are particularly pressing in Anhui, where both economic development and highway conditions have lagged behind the more developed coastal provinces. Anhui’s road authorities are looking for efficient and effective methods to improve road maintenance planning, programming and service delivery.
“The project will support Anhui’s efforts to improve highway maintenance and asset management capacity. The project seeks a balance among management processes, people, technologies, and funding. We will draw on lessons learned from previous World Bank-supported transport projects in Anhui and other provinces in China and share international best practices,” said Zhai Xiaoke, World Bank’s Senior Transport Specialist and project team leader.
Specifically, the Anhui Road Maintenance Innovation and Demonstration Project will support:
- Road asset management system upgrade, by supplementing computerized asset management systems with road-asset databases, asset management applications and information publishing systems, and providing training on the systems operation and management;
- Road maintenance commercialization, by applying performance-based contracting in rehabilitating and maintaining selected roads;
- Innovative and preventive maintenance technologies, by piloting new preventive maintenance technologies for rehabilitation and resurfacing works on selected national and provincial roads;
- Emergency response capacity, by developing and equipping maintenance emergency response centers in project municipalities and developing emergency management systems; and
- Institutional capacity building, through technical assistances and training.
The total cost of the project is more than US$290 million, including an IBRD loan of US$150 million and government funding of more than US$140 million. It will be implemented in five municipalities – Hefei, Chuzhou, Suzhou, Anqing, and Xuancheng, and Guangde County – between 2017 and 2023.
For more information on this project, please visit: worldbank.org/projects
For more information on the World Bank program in China, please visit: worldbank.org/china
