Afghanistan's Ring Road From Qeysar to Laman: After More Than 12 Years and Over $249 Million Spent, the Project is Only 15 Percent Complete
Abstract
This report discusses the results of SIGAR's review of the construction of a 233-kilometer section of the Afghan Ring Road from Qeysar, in Faryab province, to Laman, in Badghis province using Asian Development Bank (ADB) grants, funded by the United States and other ADB members. We found that from July 2005 through December 2017, ADB committed a total of $721 million in grant funding through the Asian Development Fund (ADF) to the Afghan government for the construction and rehabilitation of the Ring Road from Qeysar to Laman. Most of those funds were made available to the Afghan Ministry of Public Works (MoPW), which in turn contracted with construction, engineering, and security providers to build the road. However, the project was plagued by security challenges, poor contractor performance, and a lack of capacity within the MoPW to manage large construction contracts. Those issues led to repeated failed efforts and the termination of two contracts for the construction of the road. As of September 2017, MoPW had disbursed $249 million of the ADF grant funds to build this 233-kilometersection of road, but contractors had only achieved 15 percent construction progress. At that time, construction had been stalled for two and a half years, and the delay almost certainly eroded much of the limited construction work that had been completed. In December 2017, ADB approved $150 million in additional grant funding to complete the road. This $150 million in new funding brought the total allocation for the project up to $721 million, with between $249 million and $283 million already spent and up to $472 million remaining to fund future construction. We provided a draft of this report to the Department of the Treasury, which provides oversight of the multilateral development banks, for comment on April 9, 2018. We received technical comments through the Office of the U.S. Executive Director to ADB on June 1, 2018, which we incorporated as appropriate.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 01, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1138895
Entities
People
- John P. Sopko
Organizations
- Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction