The Asian Development Bank (ADB) said Thursday its focus of road projects has shifted to China's poor central and southwest regions to increase the benefits there from ADB funds.

Nigel Rayner, director of Transport and Communications for ADB's East and Central Asia Department, said roads comprise the largest sub-sector of ADB's operations in China, accounting for about 60 percent of a portfolio totaling 1.5 billion US dollars.

Roads are likely to remain a major part of the bank's future programs, the bank said.

Senior Chinese officials, experts, consultants and officials from the Asian Development Bank are meeting in Beijing Thursday to discuss China's road programs and the implementation of a technical assistance (TA) grant to help China improve the planning and operation of its road network projects.

The technical assistance program, which is sponsored by the Poverty Reduction Cooperation Fund financed by the Government of the United Kingdom, will help optimize future road investments in China and maximize their benefits for the poor by improving the linkage between local roads and the National Trunk Highway System.

Kim Jraiw, an ADB Senior Transport Specialist and the mission leader for the TA, said that in view of the tremendous growth expected and current obstacles, the TA will help the Government prepare a road network strategy that promotes the integration of expressways and local roads to meet communities' needs and support economic growth.

Officials at the Chinese Ministry of Communications, the executing agency of the TA, and representatives from the Ministry of Finance were among those attending the workshop.

Despite huge investments, China's road transportation network has many limitations, which are particularly evident in poor rural western areas, said the bank.

The bank said obstacles that limit the poverty impact of Government and ADB-financed road projects and impede understanding of the linkage between better roads and poverty reduction include the Government's single-project approach to planning, which results in insufficient attention paid to linking expressways with local roads to meet the basic infrastructure needs of the poor.

"Adopting an area-wide approach to road network planning can significantly help eliminate poverty and optimize transport system efficiency," the bank said.

Other obstacles are the weaknesses of the 1992 national feasibility study guidelines, which form the basis for the selection of new road investment projects, limited fiscal resources for local roads, and lack of transport planning about which expressways and local roads can be integrated with community transport systems, the bank said in a statement.

Databases, analysis resources, monitoring systems, guidelines to address social and stakeholder dimensions, and traditional road engineering factors are also absent, the bank said.

The expected outputs of the TA include an integrated and sustainable road network development strategy, and priorities for the 11th Five-Year Plan ( 2006-2010).

They will also include a mechanism recommended to the Government to tackle institutional obstacles in funding local road projects, and improving the Government's Feasibility Study methodology and guidelines to facilitate road network project planning and selection, and a computerized information system to provide uniform social, economic, engineering, transport, and area-specific data to fill the current gap

A Transport Planning Unit will provide ongoing expertise on road investment programs, interagency cooperation, and monitoring.

ADB's operational approach revolves around the dual concerns of developing the National Trunk Highway System to connect key economic centers, and improving local roads to increase the likelihood that the poor will benefit from investments.

Source: Xinhua