A special purpose vehicle to raise funds for the Smart City project in Visakhapatnam would be floated soon even as the Vizag-specific mission for Smart City would be in place by May-June.
The United States Trade Development Agency, which is facilitating corporates from the USA to plan and develop Visakhapatnam, Allahabad and Ajmer as smart cities, would be able to put in place a mission specific for the city and the State Government can expect proposals from the corporates to flow in, Regional Director South and South East Asia of USTDA Henry Steingass said speaking at a conference on Visakhapatnam as Smart City organised by CII and the Government of AP here on Friday.
Infrastructure modernisation would require billions of dollars. Financing would be a major challenge for the Government and the corporates would want long term guarantees, he said.
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The Government would be floating a special purpose vehicle for the purpose of raising funds for financing the project which would require an estimated Rs. 23,555 crores for various sectoral initiatives to achieve Smart City goals, Secretary Municipal Administration and Urban Development Aramane Giridhar said.
As spelt out in the concept paper and mandated by the Centre the Civic administration would try to raise funds through unlocking value of unutilised assets and user charges for services provided. The Government has been able to raise funds from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank for revamp of some infrastructure, the Secretary said.
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“We have a modicum of an action plan on the roll out of Smart City project,” he said and invited corporations to come and invest in Visakhapatnam, which was a future economic powerhouse.
District Collector N Yuvaraj, chairman CII Andhra Pradesh Suresh Chitturi, vice-chairman G. S. Shiv Kumar, Commercial Counselor US Embassy in India Dillon Banerjee, Prashant Pradhan of the IBM and executive director of American Chamber of Commerce Ajay Singha spoke.