The World Bank on Thursday approved a loan of US$100 million to China to help improve urban roads and drainage and wastewater treatment facilities in Qingyang City in eastern Gansu Province.

Qingyang City is located on the Loess Plateau and has a population of 2.64 million. With rich oil and coal reserves, Qingyang is envisioned to become an emerging energy base of national significance. However, the shortage of essential urban infrastructure services has constrained the city's efforts to improve its livability and environment to attract external investment.

The Gansu Qingyang Urban Infrastructure Improvement Project aims to help address this bottleneck and provide adequate urban transport and environmental infrastructure. To be implemented in the Xifeng District of Qingyang City, project components include: (a) construction of new bypass roads and connection roads; (b) improvement of selected main road corridors including road pavement, traffic channelization, and lighting and greening, rehabilitation of selected backstreets and small lanes for slow traffic, and carrying out of the Parking Action Plan, the Public Transport Action Plan, and the Traffic Safety, Education and Enforcement Action Plan as part of the design of the integrated road corridor; (c) construction or rehabilitation of drainage and sewer mains and sewage collection pipes in the old city area; and (d) construction of a new wastewater treatment plant, a wastewater pumping station and associated wastewater trunks and collectors. In addition, technical assistance will be provided in order to strengthen operational and maintenance capabilities of the local water, sewer and transport providers, as well as the local government's capacity for project implementation and management.

"The project is set to deliver multiple benefits to the residents in Qiangyang, from introduction of integrated road corridors to travel time savings for all transport users and improved road safety, and from reduced wastewater pollution of the local rivers and groundwater to more sustainable urban infrastructure facilities. It will also help Qingyang City become more attractive to external investment," said You Ji, World Bank's Urban Specialist and project's team leader.

The project is estimated to cost US$192.35 million, to be financed by the World Bank loan and counterpart funding from the local government.