NEW DELHI: The ambitious Asian Highway project, which will be India’s answer to China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative, will traverse 740km in the North East and will cost around Rs 5,000 crore.
The highway will run from the Indo-Bangladesh border in Jowai through stretches of Assam, Nagaland to Moreh in Manipur, which shares its southern and eastern borders with Myanmar.
India, which is the only South Asian country that is not a part of the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) project, is fast-tracking a section of the Asian Highway project to link with Thailand via Myanmar.
The foreign ministry is offering funds through a development partnership programme to refurbish the India-Myanmar Friendship Highway where the Asian Development Bank and Japan might be roped in.
The giant road will revive old trade links with eastern neighbours and improve connectivity to the North East.
India signed up for the Asian Highway Network in 2004 at a session of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and Pacific. Under the programme, part of the Myanmar highway was built but that was washed away in natural disasters. Myanmar had failed to provide funds for the project.
The highway will pass through Myanmar and connect with the Thai road network at Mae Sot.
The four-lane highway has been envisaged to be part of the proposed ASEAN East-West Corridor that will connect India via Thailand to Malaysia and Singapore as well as to Vietnam.
While India is upset with China since OBOR will pass through next door neighbor Pakistan and that too in the POK, the East Asian countries are ruffled over the military build-up in South China Sea.
