courtesy  : sustainability next

Mumbai Set To Become a Sustainable City in 3 Years

Managing urbanization is the biggest challenge for governments today. We have been in a denial mode for a long time believing that India lives in its villages. In fact, 65% of our GDP comes from our cities.

Indian cities are unsustainable urbanization. No Indian city has proper waste management today. We have miserably failed to make our cities sustainable.

Not a drop of sewage in Mumbai is treated today before it goes to the sea. In the next 3 to 4 years we will treat every single drop of sewage in Mumbai.

Big push to public transport

No city has found solution using private transport. It’s only the public transport that makes the city sustainable. Mumbai suburban railway transports 7 million people
a day today. But it is not enough.

In the past two years, we have planned 200 kms of metro work, started work on 120 km and all 200 kms will be ready for use by 2022. This can carry 9 million passengers.

An SPV (special project vehicle) has been floated for an elevated sub-urban corridor project. This will transport 4 million passengers more.

We are integrating all modes of transport. Creating digital platform where a person will be able to find all the direction through an app. We will also be bringing it on a single ticket.

I have cleared development plans for most of the cities in Maharashtra. It used to take 10 to 15 years before, now we have cleared all of them in two years. The Mumbai development plan is expected to be presented soon and that too will be cleared without any delay.

Nagpur will be the first city in the country to treat all its sewage and sell the water to power plants by next year. Now it is treating 60% of its sewage.

My government is totally committed to sustainability.

 Real Estate Scenario

• India is becoming a more transparent market since the last two years. India’s ranking is today 36, we were 48 three years ago.
• India’s developers are over leveraged. Interest on profit before tax (PDT) used to be 30% seven years ago. Today it is 150%. Indian developers need to fix their financing issues.
• Private equity is only 20%. In that 90% is going to office. The largest owner of office space in India is Blackstone. 50% of all space is leased by American companies. Indian companies account for 30%.
• PPP are essentially negotiated contracts. It’s in the interest of the concessionaire to reduce capital and operating cost. Usually PPP is a compromise that satisfies no one. One should be sure that you are getting what you paid for and that there is real value.