The World Bank (WB) announced Friday it had allocated 450 million U.S. dollars to finance road construction in Ukraine, according to Xinhua.
The funding would improve "the condition and quality of the Kiev-Kharkov highway between the cities of Poltava and Lubny" and help enhance the safety of Ukrainian roads, the WB said in a statement on its website.
The bank said the funding was in addition to the 400 million dollar loan the bank granted for the rehabilitation of Ukraine's road network in 2009.
Poor road quality poses a big challenge to Ukraine, with nearly half the roads in the country in extremely poor condition.
Traffic accidents, which are estimated to cost the East European country around 4 percent of its gross domestic product every year, annually kill about 5,000 Ukrainians and injure or disable thousands more.
