GIFT achieves financial closure of Rs 1,157 crore for Phase I

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project Gujarat International Finance Tec-City Company Ltd (GIFTCL), better known as GIFT City, has achieved the financial closure for Rs 1,157 crore first phase development.  A consortium of five banks, led by Syndicate Bank has tied up with GIFT City for the latter’s debt requirement of Rs 1,157 crore.

While the financial closure has been achieved for the debt requirement of Rs 1,157 crore, GIFT City would be investing another Rs 661 crore through equity and internal accruals over the next three years for the estimated cost of Rs 1818 crore for development of various infrastructure in the first phase.  The other consortium banks include Bank of India (BoI), Bank of Baroda (BoB), Punjab & Sindh Bank, and Corporation Bank.

According to Ramakant Jha, managing director and Group CEO of GIFTCL, the funds will be utilized for developing the state of the art infrastructure planned for the city which includes road network, district cooling system, automated solid waste management system, utility tunnel, smart ICT, master balancing reservoir, water and sewerage treatment plant, power distribution system and infrastructure components.

“World class infrastructure is USP of GIFT Project. We want to ensure that the national and global firms operating out of GIFT experience world class infrastructure for their operations,” said Jha, adding that with the use of state of the art infrastructure the operating cost in GIFT City would be much lower than other national and international centres.

The implementation of these infrastructure components is under progress; many of them are being introduced for the first time in India. Reputed international agencies like ETA Engineering of Dubai is implementing the District Cooling system and Sweden based Envac is developing the Automated waste collection system in the city.

Being developed as India’s only International Financial Services Centre (IFSC), GIFT City is rapidly emerging as favored destination amongst Financial Institutions for setting up their operations. Allotment of 10.6 mn. sq. ft. of BUA has already been made for development of commercial, residential and social facilities.

Some of the key facilities set to come up at GIFT City include World Trade Centre (WTC), SBI Commercial Tower, Tier IV Data Centre, Skill Development & Training Centre and an Outsourcing Centre for foreign markets in GIFT SEZ. Letter of allotments for the same were recently handed over during a national summit on financial services recently held at GIFT City.

Allotments for ICSE School, five star hotel, business club and hospital have already been made earlier, while company has also made allotment for development of around 500 residential units recently.