Rs 1,500cr Hudco Aid For Pollution

Housing and Urban Development Corporation (Hudco) has planned to fund pollution control projects to mitigate environmental degradation. In the current fiscal, it has earmarked a sum of Rs 1,500 crore for assistance to such projects, covering a wide range of activities.

Sanctions worth Rs 450 crore have been granted between April and July. The areas of funding would include projects aiming to prevent or control pollution. The company would also provide consultancy services for technological upgradation. Another objective is to help the loan beneficiaries become commercially viable.

Hudco chairman and managing director V Suresh feels that out of the sanction target of Rs 1,500 crore, disbursements to the tune of about Rs 1,000 crore would be possible before the year ends.

Projects attracting Hudco's assistance would be solid waste management systems including treatment of municipal garbage and bio-medical wastes, use of timber substitutes, fly ash and production of such other building materials and components, conversion of phospho gypsum fertilisers into calcimined gypsum for wall making, and energy saving projects.

Hudco will also finance projects aimed at reduction of ozone depleting substances that contribute to global warming.

Other schemes covered by Hudco financing include those for supply of clean water and upgradation and rehabilitation of the existing water supply schemes, sewerage and drainage development, and low cost sanitation schemes. The company will also finances schemes that seek to protect the public health against air, water and land pollution.