21 Aug 2014

Resilience key to Solomons rebuild

6:14 am on 21 August 2014

The Asian Development Bank says a 15 million US dollar infrastructure project to help Solomon Islands recover from April's floods will focus on resilience to future disasters.

The ADB's Climate Change specialist, Hanna Uusimaa, says the total estimate for the rebuild of the Solomon Islands transport system is almost 35 million US dollars and there is still a significant financial gap facing the country.

She says the objective of the reconstruction is to reduce the ongoing negative impact on the economy by restoring the connectivity to essential services and main commercial centres.

"And also because the damaged assets are being rebuilt to a higher standard of climate and disaster resilience by building back better to avoid this level of damage from recurring in future."

Hanna Uusimaa says the project is due to start in 2016 once feasibility studies are done.