In February the World Bank’s Board cleared a $210 million dollar loan to the state of Andhra Pradesh, India after the United States Government decided to stop blocking the loan. The US Executive Director had been ordered to oppose loans to India following that countries’s nuclear tests last year. Now Washington has been assured that India will sign the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the United Nations deadline in September.
The loan, aiming to privatise the state’s public-sector electricity board is the first in a series of ‘adaptable programme loans’ totalling up to one billion dollars that the Bank plans to provide over the next eight years to transform Andhra Pradesh state’s power sector.