Six smart cities of TN vie for $500m World Bank grant

CHENNAI:

The six smart cities of Tamil Nadu, selected during the first two rounds, are among the 60 smart cities which are in the race to avail $500 million worth performance based incentives offered by World Bank.

Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, Salem, Thanjavur and Vellore are among the six cities which will be vying for the performance based incentives that is being offered by World Bank. The grants are open to only first 60 special purpose vehicles selected under the Smart Cities Mission

It is learnt that World Bank has partnered with  Union Urban Ministry to design the performance based programme with an outlay of $500 million of which $480m will be available as performance based incentive grants.

The rest will be available for specific demand-driven capacity building and project management support at state and special purpose vehicle level.

Sources indicated that a screening framework has been prepared which lists out mandatory conditions, screening of states and union territories and the criteria of shortlisting special purpose vehicles. The six smart cities will have to submit proposals from  November 30 and the last date of submitting the applications is December 11, 2017.

It is learnt that three or four states or Union territories will be selected and upto 12 special purpose vehicles (SPV) will be shortlisted for participation in the Indian Smart Cities Programme.

As per figures available with Express (Till June 2017), a total of Rs 35,000 crore worth projects have been taken up by the cities selected under the two rounds of Smart Cities Mission.