World Bank ‘drops’ funding of Amaravati construction

VIJAYAWADA: In a huge blow to the state government’s ambitious plans to build a world class capital city, Amaravati, the World Bank appears to have pulled out of financing the project.

The World Bank website said the project—“Amaravati Sustainable Infrastructure and Institutional Development Project (ASIIDP)” — has been ‘dropped’ without giving any reasons. Of the total project cost of USD 715 million, the WB had initially come forward to finance USD 300 million with remaining amount to be funded by Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).

Until Wednesday, the status of the project on the World Bank website showed ‘in the pipeline’. On Thursday it changed to ‘dropped’.

This comes after the World Bank had set up an inspection panel to look into the complaints filed by few capital region farmers.

In May 2017, a few landowners from the capital region villages had written to the World Bank alleging irregularities in the land procurement. This has led to the World Bank’s inspection panel to register a complaint as per the farmers’ request.

Starting September, 2017 a team of experts from the World Bank had visited Amaravati several times to investigate the allegations of forced land-pooling and the alleged irregularities committed by the government. While nobody was available at WB to comment on the status of the Amaravati project, CRDA officials said that they were unaware of the latest development.

“We have no information about World Bank dropping the project. Even day before yesterday one of our representatives had a meeting with WB officials at Delhi. Our official is yet to return from Delhi,” said CRDA commissioner P. Lakshmi Narasimham.