The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the apex department for Smart City Mission is all set to roll out the Smart City 2.0 mission in 2020.
The second version of the smart city mission will be rolled out in 2020 across the country, said a government official.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is also looking at alternative funding mechanisms such as bonds, tapping foreign capital, fiscal money, pool finance, and monetisation of unused land.
“We will also infuse lots of private participation to infuse capital in the planned and upcoming cities. Also, cities that will improve the fiscal strength will get major portion of the central government grant,” said Kunal Kumar, Joint Secretary and Mission Director, Smart Cities Mission. “The government is also looking at increasing public private participation in the smart cities through incentives mechanism,” Kumar added.
The Union Government, after rolling out the Smart Cities Mission to 100 cities in a phased manner, is now geared up to expand the Smart Cities Mission to all 4,000 cities in the country. The mission aims to build better infrastructure, expand housing for all, and develop open spaces among many other things. “We will take learnings from the upcoming smart cities and spread it across the country. Smart Cities are like hardware and there is a huge impetus on data mining,” Kumar said.
The mission has already begun rating the existing projects under five broad parameters – technology, planning, governance, services and finance, climate sensitive action and ease of living sensitive action.
The centre’s plan to develop 100 cities stands multiple challenges such as lack of private participation, long term funding and capacity building. In the past three years, 10% of the planned projects have been completed. The deadline for completion of these projects was slated between 2019 and 2023.
