Visakhapatnam: Cities need to leverage private finance for growth, says official

Ahead of G-20 working group committee meeting, a two-day regional workshop on how cities can leverage the private finance was organised for the representatives from various municipal corporations was kick-started in Visakhapatnam on Wednesday.

Ahead of G-20 working group committee meeting, a two-day regional workshop on how cities can leverage the private finance was organised for the representatives from various municipal corporations was kickstarted here on Wednesday.

Over 70 participants, including Municipal Commissioners, Mayors and representatives from urban state departments from Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Goa, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Lakshadweep and Puducherry, attended the workshop, which was being organised as part of the ‘Jan Bhagidari’ events by the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) and International Finance Corporation (IFC).

Joint Secretary of Department of Economic Affairs, Solomon Arokiaraj, in his inaugural address, highlighted the significance of leveraging private financing for the cities. Country Manager for India Wendy Jo Werner, and Senior Program Manager, EU Delegation, Delphine Brissonneau, also expressed their thoughts on the relevance of the theme and how cities play a significant role as economic centres of growth.

In the first session on ‘Improving Civic Infrastructure’, Director, SBM-U Mission, Binay Kumar Jha, Director AMRUT Mission, Lal Chhandama, and Director, Smart Cities Mission, Lavanya Kumar, discussed on the scale and performance of each of the missions of MoHUA. The officials spoke about the IT-enabled services through Swachhata app and rating systems for the cities, how water supply and sewerage projects are being taken up in PPP model in million plus cities.

Assistant General Manager, Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Divya Hamirbasia, Principal Investment Officer, and Country Anchor for Infrastructure, IFC, Neeraj Gupta, and Assistant Adviser, Reserve Bank of India, Somnath Sharma, provided the perspectives of the regulators and discussed the constraints to commercial funding.

Addressing the media during briefing session, Director of Department of Economic Affairs, Ministry of Finance, GoI, Aman Garg, said that the purpose of the workshop is to learn how corporations can attract more private finances. The discussions in the workshop will provide a platform to learn from national and international best practices to augment urban financing

“We have tried to bring national experts together with the local/city administrators. A number of Mayors, Municipal Commissioners and people from urban department generally do not have an opportunity to interact with experts from various countries and with such workshop, they can meet and interact,” he said.