Asian Development Bank (ADB) has approved a $554 million funding package comprising new and reallocated funds to help recovery and reconstruction operations after the disastrous floods.
The ADB has stated in a statement that the money will also be used to increase Pakistan’s resilience to natural disasters and climate change.
According to ADB’s statement the funding, which comes in the form of a $475 million loan from the ADB $3 million grant will be for technical assistance and a $5 million grant from the Government of Japan. ADB has also stated that the package will support the restoration of irrigation, drainage, flood risk management, on-farm water management and transport infrastructure in the flood-affected areas of Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh.
Climate and disaster emergency preparedness will be included in the infrastructure design of the Emergency Flood Assistance Project of the ADB. In addition, the lender has reallocated an extra $71 million in existing loans to help the government with flood relief.
According to ADB Director General for Central and West Asia Yevgeniy Zhukov, “this year’s floods, which affected 33 million people and caused huge damage to infrastructure and agriculture, are a terrible reminder of Pakistan’s severe vulnerability to climate change.”
Zhukov also stated that the rebuilding of vital infrastructure and the restoration of rural livelihoods were two goals of this endeavour.
Pakistan has seen its worst floods of a century this year as a result of the powerful monsoon. Vast swaths of land were submerged. Government and development partners including ADB completed a post-disaster needs assessment according to which the cost of overall damage and losses was over $30 billion and the cost of recovery and reconstruction around $16.3 billion.
According to ADB, the loan will be used to rebuild around 400 km of highways, 85 km of the N-5 and approximately 30 bridges.
According to ADB Principal Transport Specialist Zheng Wu more people were predicted to slip into poverty after the floods the food insecure people would likely treble to more than 14 million people in the most impacted regions.
