The country’s first smart city that is expected to take shape at the Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR) and the first International Financial Services Centre at GIFT City are two of the major infrastructure projects in Gujarat that are expected to get a major boost through the 2015-16 Budget presented by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Saturday.
Jaitley not only praised both these projects, but also laid out a roadmap for giving a financial boost to these projects that have been strongly pursued by the Gujarat government for the last several years.
“I am delighted to report good progress for DMIC (Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor) corridor: the Ahmedabad-Dholera Investment Region in Gujarat, and the Shendra-Bidkin Industrial Park near Aurangabad, in Maharashtra, are now in a position to start work on basic infrastructure. In the current year, I have earmarked an initial sum of Rs 1,200 crore. However, as the pace of expenditure picks up, I will provide them additional funds,” Jaitley said in his Budget speech.
The provision made in Union Budget for Dholera SIR – the first and the biggest of the seven nodes of DMIC – comes just days after the Gujarat government made a “special allocation” of Rs 30 crore for the Dholera Special Investment Region (SIR) in the state Budget presented earlier this week. The state Budget also talked about four-laning of the all important Bhavnagar-Ahmedabad road that passes through the Dholera SIR.
These provisions for the Dholera SIR from both the Union and State governments come at a crucial time. The Gujarat government has already floated Request for Quotation for about Rs 2,000 crore of infrastructure works that it plans to undertake in the 22.5 square kilometre of “activation area” within the Dholera SIR that has been created to act as a catalyst for further investments from local and global players.
Various trunk infrastructure projects that will be developed in this “activation area” include 72 kms of roads and utility services, potable water supply, desalination plant, waste water treatment plant, 430 MW of power infrastructure, 500 kms of conduits for creating an Information and Communication Technology (ICT) network and 14,000 square metres of built-up area that will form the administrative and business centre for Dholera in Phase-I. The Gujarat government has also divided the developable area in Dholera SIR — which is spread over a total of 920 square kilometres — into six town planning (TP) schemes.
Pointing out a lacunae in the smart city plan, Anuj Puri, country head of Jones Lang LaSalle says, “The Budget did not provide any details on this (Smart Cities) initiative. Factors such as how it will define these cities and which cities have been identified remain unclear.”
IFSC REGULATIONS IN MARCH: JAITLEY
APART from Dholera SIR, the other major infrastructure project in Gujarat that received attention is the Gujarat International Finance Tec-City or the GIFT City project that has been the one of the pet projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that was conceptualised way back in 2007 and marketed as a top-notch global financial centre. However, most of the Rs 9,000 crore of investments that it has attracted so far has come after the Modi became PM. In his Budget speech, Jaitley said, “I am glad to announce that the first phase of GIFT City will soon become a reality. Appropriate regulations will be issued in March.”