ADB provides support to Sound Global for Chinese water infrastructure projects

Asian Development Bank (ADB) has signed an agreement with Chinese water treatment firm Sound Global to provide a $300m loan for improvement of rural wastewater management infrastructure.

The loan includes $100m and a syndicated loan of $200m to fund the wastewater treatment projects of Sound Global in rural areas of China.

Sound Global will be using a suite of proprietary products, SMART(note), to treat water in an eco-friendly way.

The new project expects to treat 240,000t of wastewater per day across 100 townships in the country by 2017.

ADB’s East Asia unit head of private sector infrastructure finance Hisaka Kimura said: "By building and operating wastewater treatment plants with small modular automatic rapid technologies, smart solutions can be provided for small communities in rural areas that currently do not have wastewater treatment infrastructure.

"We are very pleased to partner with Sound Global for this important endeavour that will help improve the quality of life of rural communities."

According to ADB, half of the Chinese population live in rural areas and wastewater generated from those areas find their way into rivers, lakes and underground aquifers, thereby posing major environmental risks.

Untreated wastewater flowing directly back to the local surface water contaminates local water quality, which in turn affects the downstream local population in China, who are dependent on local water sources.

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Image: ADB headquarters in Mandaluyong City, Philippines. Photo: courtesy of Eugene Alvin Villar (seav) / Wikipedia.