[Jai]

Four cities will appear on the Indian map

Foreign funds will pump in Rs2 lakh crore to create the ultra-chic cities

DNA India Epaper
27 Mar, 2007

On Republic Day this year, Macquarie Bank, Australia’s largest securities firm, announced that it will invest $25 billion along with three partners to create an ultramodern integrated township on 65,000 acres in Andhra Pradesh, just 170km off Bangalore.

Four weeks later, Tishman Speyer Properties LP, which owns New York’s famous Rockefeller Centre and Frankfurt’s MesseTurm, said it, along with ICICI Bank and Nagarjuna Construction Co, will build a $2 billion residential and commercial township for 30,000 people, spread over 400 acres near Hyderabad.

On Monday, or exactly another four weeks after the Tishman announcement, Al Nakheel LLC, an international property development firm owned by the Dubai government said it will, along with DLF Ltd, build two ‘Manhattans’ near Mumbai and Gurgaon, spread over 20,000 acres each.

Each city will cost about $10 billion or Rs43,300 crore to construct, with the first phase, expected to be completed by 2010, seeing the partners investing $5 billion apiece.

In all, $47 billion or Rs203,000 crore of private money will be invested over the next couple of years to create four ultra modern cities from ground up.

The cities near Mumbai and Gurgaon will be three times as large as New York’s Manhattan Island, DLF said.

All the four cities will be world-class and self-contained, with wide, international-quality roads, telecom networks, educational institutions, industrial clusters, hospitals and amusement parks.


Cities near Mumbai, Delhi
Located on the outskirts of Mumbai and in Gurgaon, Haryana, spread across 20,000 acres each Investment of $10 billion in the first phase
Investor: Limitless LLC, a Dubai government firm, and DLF Ltd

Science city near Bangalore
About 400km from Hyderabad and 150km from Bangalore Investment of $25 bn, spread across 65,000 acres, over 10 years
Investors: Macquarie Bank, Australia, and Singapore’s Jurong Corp and Semb Corp

Mini city near Hyderabad
A 400 acre commercial and residential development on the outskirts of Charminar city Will house 30,000 people, shops, and cultural amenities
Investors: Tishman Speyer, ICICI Bank, Nagarjuna Construction Growth to boost need for homes Foreign funds are moving into real estate because the 9-10 per cent economic growth foreseen will explode demand for homes, commercial space.

House prices in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore have more than tripled since 2004