Wednesday, May 4 2005 09:17 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Istanbul: Asia's cities need $ 40 billion a year to allow their infrastructures to keep pace with their growing populations, an expert from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) said in Istanbul yesterday (May 3, 2005).

However, the ADB extends only about $ 3.2 billion yearly in loans for urban areas, said Bindu Lohani, director general of ADB's regional, sustainable development department.

This highlights the need for Asia's ballooning cities to find alternative sources of funding for their infrastructure needs, experts and officials said at a seminar in Istanbul a day before the opening of the ADB's annual conference.

Funding the infrastructure needs of cities has been he focus of a series of seminars held in the sidelines of the ADB annual conference, which formally opens today (May 4, 2005).

Lohani said the populations of Asian cities had grown at a rate that "exceeded by far the political will and financial, technical, managerial and administrative capacity of the responsible authorities".

He cited UN figures showing that by 2010, there would be 23 "mega-cities" worldwide, 12 of them located in Asian developing countries.

These mega-cities, with populations of 10 million or more, were expected to be: Mumbai, Dhaka, Karachi, Kolkata, Jakarta, Delhi, Manila, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Seoul and Hyderabad.