World Bank to provide $ 1 billion assistance for cleaning of Ganga

World Bank President Robert Zoellick and the Minister of State for Environment and Forests, Jairam Ramesh at a meeting to discuss long term financing for cleaning programme of river Ganga, in New Delhi on December 02, 2009.

The World Bank today agreed to provide an initial assistance of $ 1 billion to the Government of India for its recently launched programme to clean and conserve the Ganga river.

The assistance will be provided over the next four to five years, World Bank Group President Robert B Zoellick and Minister of State for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh said in a joint statement after a meeting here today.

The statement announced the Bank's commitment to explore the provision of long-term financing and knowledge assistance for this critical national programme.

"The Ganga has sustained civilization throughout time, but is today burdened by expanding production, industries and urban development along its banks and in its basin, with all the pollution this brings," Mr Zoellick said.

"The Bank would be honored to help and support India’s renewed endeavor to revitalize this uniquely important river," he said.

"This is a project of enormous national importance and I am pleased that the World Bank has come forward to assist us," Mr Ramesh said.

Mr Zoellick said global experience showed that cleaning and conserving large rivers was an immense challenge requiring bold action and long-term commitment.

"The Government of India has shown visionary leadership in beginning to address this challenge and the Bank will begin its engagement by facilitating the exchange of relevant experience from elsewhere. We hope this will assist in the improved management of this great river basin that supports close to 400 million people in India alone," he added.

According to the statement, the World Bank will seek to support the Government’s national programme to clean and conserve the Ganga through substantial financing over several phases, with the first of several loans/credits planned for presentation to the Bank’s Board of Executive Directors for approval between July 2010 and June 2011. The initial phase of any Bank assistance would focus on three key areas:

· Building the institutions and knowledge base for basin management: Bank support will seek to help develop the newly constituted National Ganga River Basin Authority (NGRBA) into a world-class institution with a state-of-the-art Knowledge Centre that can manage the basin in a sustainable manner.

· Helping build a global consortium of financiers: The Government of India estimates that it will require an initial investment of $ 4 billion to achieve its immediate objective of stopping all discharge of untreated sewage and industrial effluent into the Ganga by 2020. The Bank will help India access funding from other financial partners to support this objective, known as the ‘Mission Clean Ganga’.

· Financing priority investments: The Bank will seek to finance select investments aimed at cleaning the Ganga, where pollution levels in certain stretches touches ten thousand times India’s bathing standards. This initial portfolio of projects will be finalized by NGRBA by March 2010.

Acknowledging the Government’s efforts to secure broad-based stakeholder engagement around the Ganga program, Mr Zoellick said the Bank’s experience in similar programmes globally showed that river management and clean-up programmes needed to be a "compelling proposition for all stakeholders" in order to be sustainable. This was all the more important in a river with the "iconic status" of the Ganga, he said.

Applauding the Government of India’s approach of moving from a town-centric approach to a broader river basin approach, the World Bank’s Country Director for India, Mr Roberto Zagha, said effective implementation would depend on building the right institutions that could deliver results in a complex, multi-state, multi-sector environment.

"These institutions must also be coupled with the right kind of incentives. The challenge before us is to develop results-based incentives for all the agencies involved so that we can achieve the desired goal of a clean and sustainable Ganga," he said.

The meeting was attended by officials of the NGRBA, the Ministry of Environment and Forests and senior officials from the five Ganga basin states - Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

NNN