Featured Topics

Roads provide the dominant form of transportation in the South Asia Region. Several aspects of the road sector that are of particular relevance to the region and receive constant attention and urgent action from the World Bank are discussed in this section.

	Road Asset Management - Roads and highways provide the dominant mode of land transportation in many South Asian countries. They often carry more than 80 percent of passengers and over 50 percent of freight and provide essential links to vast rural road networks.
	Road Funds - Road Funds have emerged as one of the more popular forms of financing gaps in road sector funding in the South Asia Region.
	Highway Sector Financing - Road maintenance remains underfunded in the South Asia region despite some efforts to commercialize the road sector. This leads to a distorted vehicle fleet, skews the allocation of traffic between road and rail, and results in substantial economic losses.
	Road Safety - The road safety problem in the region is alarming. Road traffic fatalities in South Asia alone are expected to rise by 144 percent between 2000 and 2020.
	HIV/AIDS - The transport sector is crucial to reducing the spread of HIV/AIDS in South Asia as transport workers are twice as likely to acquire the HIV infection as workers in ‘low-risk’ occupations.
	Governance and Transport: Developing Framework Corruption in transport projects can account for as much as 5-20% of transaction costs. South Asia region has made improving governance and public accountability a central theme.