Although until now India has lagged far behind other Asian industrial economies, such as China and South Korea, in developing smart cities, these new projects are already creating initial momentum for smart city infrastructure development in India, says the report.
An announcement, by the Indian government to create 100 Smart Cities has the potential to create a new competitive landscape for the subcontinent that#
The smart city projects include; the under construction GIFT, which is designed to be an international financial services and technology hub, Dholera Special Industrial Region (SIR) located in the DIMC, Smart City or integrated township 50 kms south of Chennai for Japanese industrial firms such as automakers and electronics firms and a Smart City in Kochi in Kerala.
These projects are also attracting leading global technology partners, such as Siemens, Cisco Systems, Microsoft, ABB, NEC, Toshiba and IBM, as well as India’s own IT giants, such as Infosys, TCS and Wipro.
The paper also noted the announcement of significant tax changes for REITs and infrastructure trusts in the new government’s first budget that will accelerate the development of the Indian REITs market and allow large-scale foreign portfolio capital inflows into Indian Smart City and other real estate projects.
“With total FDI into India amounting to $28 billion in 2013 for all sectors, the impact of the accelerated development of Indian Smart Cities in combination with the commencement of the Indian REITs market could provide a very substantial increase to average annual Indian FDI inflows over the medium-term as Smart Cities move past the planning phase and funds begin to flow in for the development phase,” Biswas says.
Fibre2fashion News Desk - India