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Journalism of Courage
PUNE, April 20: In an attempt to assist municipal corporations all over the country to structure bankable and commercially viable projects to strengthen their infrastructural facilities, an international seminar on `Project development experience in urban environmental infrastructure’ has been organised in Pune.
The three day seminar, organised by the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), New Delhi – a research centre supported by the Union Ministry of Urban Affairs and Employment, got underway here this evening.
Around 55 delegates, including top bureaucrats from various states in India, officials of various financial institutions and 20 foreign delegates from South East Asian countries are participating in the seminar being held at Hotel Holiday Inn.
Representative of international agencies like the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and Overseas Development Administration of UK are also participating in the seminar which will be chaired by D M Sukthankar, president of NIUA.
At a hurriedly-called press conference, held at the office of the Pune Municipal Commissioner Ramanath Jha just one and half hours before the inaugural session, Gangadhar Jha, research professor of the NIUA, said that the seminar would be inaugurated by Kiran Agarwal, secretary, Ministry of Urban Affairs and Employment.
He regretted that the NIUA could not make a public announcement about the seminar in advance due to some communication problems.
Elaborating on the concept behind organising the seminar in Pune, Gangadhar Jha pointed out to the media persons that the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) was contemplating to issue Rs 200 crore municipal bonds to raise funds for financing its schemes for water supply augmentation and road works.
The NIUA in association with United State Agency for International Development (USAID) had in 1994 launched a programme known as the Financial Institutions Reforms and Expansion (FIRE-D) with a view to develop a debt market in India for financing urban environmental infrastructure like water supply, sewerage, solid waste disposal etc. The programme is aimed at developing a new system of financing these projects by accessing the capital market, instead on depending on the municipal tax revenue.
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation was the first city to have issued municipal bonds to finance its water supply projects. Many other cities including Pune are contemplating to follow its suit, Gangadhar Jha said adding that the seminar would disseminate the experience gained in Ahmedabad and countries like Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia under the FIRE (D) programme for replication in other cities across the country.
