33% of 5,151 Smart City projects completed: Report

Smart City

Moneycontrol News

Only 33 percent of the total 5,151 Smart City Mission projects have been completed or are currently under implementation, utilising around 25 percent of the envisaged investment, according to a report by The Hindu BusinessLine.

Around 2,342 projects worth Rs 90,929 crore have been tendered. Out of these, 1,675 projects worth Rs 51,866 crore are currently being implemented or have been completed, according to data presented by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to the Lok Sabha.

Hence, 3,476 projects have either only been tendered or have not gone through the tendering process.

The ministry told Parliament, “The pace of implementation of projects has picked up significantly during the last one year. There has been a 290 percent increase in projects tendered, 332 percent increase in projects grounded/completed and 479 percent increase in projects completed since October 2017.”

“It takes around 12-18 months to set up a special purpose vehicle (SPV), procure project management consultants (PMC), hire necessary people, call tenders and issue work orders,” the ministry added.

Creation of ‘smart cities’ was one of the key promises made by Narendra Modi-led Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the run-up to the 2014 Lok Sabha elections.

The 100 selected ‘smart cities’ include projects worth Rs 2.05 lakh crore in their proposals.

All these cities have incorporated SPVs, 91 have set up PMCs and all of the 100 cities have constituted city-level advisory fora.

The Centre is to provide financial support to the extent of Rs 500 crore for each of the smart cities over a period of five years.

The state or Urban Local Body (ULB) government is to contribute an equal amount. Around 20 percent of the funding is expected to come from Public-Private Partnerships (PPP).

State or Union Territory (UT) governments have so far released Rs 13,846 crore.