New Delhi, June 26: After clearing the $543 million Andhra Pradesh Economic Restructuring Loan on Thursday, the World Bank is likely to clear 3 other loans totalling over $500 million early next week. This implies a significant turnaround in the attitude of the G-8 nations which have been opposing loans to India following the Pokharan nuclear tests.Thursday's loan to Andhra (first reported in The Indian Express) was the first loan cleared for India after the sanctions were imposed. Negotiations for it took place between May 12 and 18, after the Pokharan tests. The loan request was passed unanimously by the Bank's board. The other three loans which are expected to be cleared next week also fall under the broad category of humanitarian aid, or that which is expected to alleviate the lot of poor people.If these loans are cleared, this means that roughly half the loans which were expected to be cleared by the Bank's board, will have gone through. While no Indian loan proposal is expected to come upbefore the Asian Development Bank board in the near future, the same principles will apply there as well. The three loans expected to be cleared next week include a $300 million loan for Woman and Child Development Project, a $76 million Orissa health project and a $130 million agriculture loan for Uttar Pradesh.Once this is done, the projects which will not have been cleared will be a $450 million Powergrid loan, a $130 million loan for IREDA, a $381 million road loan for Gujarat and a $275 million road loan for Haryana.Finance Secretary Montek Singh Ahluwalia told journalists that, according to him, even power sector loans should ideally come under the head of humanitarian aid. ``Power sector reform projects, eventually, are aimed at augmenting power supplies, especially to rural areas and in that sense, help alleviate the misery of the poor. In that sense, we feel they should be considered humanitarian aid,'' he said.
