press trust of india, New Delhi, April 28: The US Tuesday asked India to resolve land acquisition problems and address issues concerning foreign direct investment to attract funds for smart city projects.
“…right now we are very much in the nascent stage of finding ways forward with India on smart cities issues. We do not have clarity on financing for the many projects that need to be done,” US Ambassador Richard Verma said.
In order to be successful, Indian state and central governments as well as the industry would need to take the lead in providing finances for smart cities, he said, adding that they were still deciding how much funding they would allocate.
“Land acquisition, foreign direct investment and other questions still remain unresolved. The expectation of large amounts of private sector finance, either domestic or foreign will be a challenge. These concerns mean many projects may not be commercially viable at the outset,” Verma said.
He was speaking at the annual general meeting of the American Chamber of Commerce (Amcham).
Verma said the challenge for the US government and companies will be to work with Indian partners on creative approaches to develop appropriate, long-term financing that will help realise these ambitious plans.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a vision of developing 100 smart cities as satellite towns of larger cities by modernising the existing mid-sized cities.
On the two-way commerce, the US Ambassador said trade in goods and services between the two countries is growing and has crossed USD 100 billion.
He added that the US is ready to work with India to increase the trade to USD 500 billion.
“If we achieve this goal sometime in the next several years, our economic relationship will be 25 times larger than it was just fifteen years ago. Right now, US and Indian ventures create over a million jobs in India and tens of thousands in the US,” Verma said.
On smart cities, he said the US would look at intelligent transportation systems, multi-modal planning, livability, and infrastructure financing.
“On sustainability, we agreed to cooperate on vehicle fuel efficiency standards and promotion of dedicated freight corridors to facilitate the movement of goods from India’s ports to major cities of the region,” he said.