ADB to increase funding up to USD2bn in next three years

Jul 08, 2016 (LBO) - Asian Development Bank said it will scale up lending to Sri Lanka to 2 billion US dollars in loans and equity in 2017 through 2019, a senior official said.





“ADB is re-orienting our operations internally and as a result have more capacity for lending programmes,” Wencai Zhang, Vice President (Operations 1) of the Asian Development Bank said at a press conference in Colombo, Friday.

“The bank gave Sri Lanka around 600 million US dollars in 2015 and expects lending to reach 700 million US dollars in 2016.” The Bank is now in the process of preparing a new country strategy for Sri Lanka for 2017-21. He says in addition to infrastructure, the bank is looking at a few new sectors as their key focus.



“We are looking at new sectors like renewable energy, smart cities and water management,” “Under the smart city developments we are planning on funding a new port access road and the improvements of the Panadura, Veyangoda rail track.” The Vice President is on a three day visit to the island and is due also meet the President and the Finance Minister.