Urban infra sector offers Rs 73 lakh crore for private players

Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday asserted that urban infrastructure sector offers Rs 73 lakh crore investment opportunity for private sector and PPP investments over the next 15 years. He elaborated on this investment potential while speaking on "Current status, Outlook and Investment opportunities in developing urban infrastructure" at the India Investment Summit organised here. Naidu stressed that given the resource limitations of both Central and state governments, private sector investments and Public-Private Partnerships are the chief instruments of resource mobilisation to build the much needed urban infrastructure in the country.

Bringing out the gaps in urban infrastructure, Naidu noted that 50 percent of urban households still do not have water connections, only 69 litres per capita per day (lpcd) of water is being supplied in urban areas as against the norm of 135 lpcd, average water supply is only for 3 hours, sewerage network services cover only 12 percent households and only 5 percent of sewerage treatment capacity is available in urban areas. "These gaps hit the urban poor the most and developing urban infrastructure accordingly leads to inclusive urban growth besides enhancing productivity and quality of life" said Naidu. He noted that the Smart City Mission, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), Swachh Bharat Mission and Prime Minister's Awas Yojana (Urban), which are aimed at ensuring urban infrastructure offered huge investment opportunities of the order of USD 1,123 billion.

Giving details, Naidu said that over and above the support committed by the Central and state governments, ensuring basic urban infrastructure requires Rs 56 lakh crore, building 2 crore houses for urban poor needs another Rs 11 lakh crore and Rs 6 lakh crore for building 100 smart cities. Expressing hope that private sector and PPP investments can be mobilised to address the infrastructure challenge, Naidu informed "10 of the 20 smart cities announced last week have laid down clear road maps for mobilising PPP investments of about Rs 9,000 crore." These include Jaipur - Rs 2,563 crore, Belgavi - Rs 1,006 crore, Davanagere and New Delhi Municipal Council - Rs 797 crore each.