Industry body Assocham has stressed on inclusion of Haryana’s upcoming satellite towns of Sonepat and Panipat in Centre’s ‘100 Smart Cities’ project. It said it can be beneficial in attracting fresh investments worth about Rs. 200 to Rs. 300 crore in the region.
An Assocham paper titled ‘Sonepat & Panipat: Strong case for inclusion in Smart Cities Project’ read, “Rise in industrial investment in sectors like automobile, biotechnology, business process outsourcing (BPO), education, food processing, healthcare, hospitality, IT, petrochemicals, sports goods, textile and others will create about 2-2.5 lakh direct and indirect jobs in this region during the course of the next 2-3 years.”
“Soaring realty prices in Delhi, Gurgaon and other neighbouring cities present significant business expansion opportunities for domestic and global industries, and this is another reason why both Sonepat and Panipat should be developed as smart cities,” said D.S. Rawat, national secretary general of Assocham, while releasing the chamber’s strategy paper.
The strategy paper said both the towns should be able to offer economic activities and employment opportunities to a god number of their residents.
The government of Haryana should identify comparative and unique advantages of both the cities together with core competencies in specific areas of economic activities and promote them aggressively by developing required infrastructure and attracting investors and professionals to take up such activities, it further said.
Haryana has enjoyed a positive track-record in terms of overall development, including an average annual growth rate of almost nine per cent during 2005-06 and 2012-13, ahead of the national growth rate of eight per cent during the same period.
