Japanese cos to help India upgrade cities

India signed an agreement with a group of Japanese companies including Toshiba, Tokyo Gas, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to upgrade and develop cities modeled on Japan’s Yokohama and Kitakyushu towns.

The Japanese companies will study the possibility of using technologies to reduce pollution, recycle industrial wastes and optimise energy supplies in the Indian cities, said Amitabh Kant, chief executive officer of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation.

India, ranked below war-ravaged Ivory Coast and Sri Lanka for the quality of infrastructure, needs to spend $2.2 trillion by 2030 on transportation, housing and office space in its cities to accelerate growth, McKinsey & Co. said in a report this month.

Expansion in the world’s fastest growing major economy after China is at risk unless the government improves its cities, McKinsey said.

“As India urbanises rapidly, we need to treat our land and natural resources as scarce commodities,” said Indian Minister for Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma. “Our aim to is to create a strong economic base with a globally competitive environment and state-of-the art infrastructure.”

The Japanese companies will help develop cities in Haryana, Maharashtra and Gujarat states in the first phase, along an industrial corridor connecting New Delhi and Mumbai, according to a government statement. Other companies in the group are Hitachi, JGC Corp and Kyocera Corp, said Kant. The average cost for developing one city is likely to be about Rs 45000 crore ($10.1 billion), Kant said. The agreement was signed today in the presence of Sharma and his Japanese counterpart, Masayuki Naoshima. The proposal to upgrade cities is part of a plan to improve industrial infrastructure along the 1,483-kilometer (921-mile) Delhi-Mumbai freight corridor, which is partly being funded by the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. The plan aims to woo investment to factories and generate jobs.