Holistic urban ecosystem needed to provide services to people: Hardeep Puri

There is a need to look to the future and focus on creating a holistic urban ecosystem for ensuring last-mile access to services, enhanced operational efficiencies, financial sustainability of projects, and integration of digital technology, said Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Wednesday.

He highlighted that Indian cities need to increase their capabilities -- individually, organisationally, and institutionally.

He was speaking at a national workshop organised by the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in association with the International Finance Corporation (IFC).

The workshop aimed at bringing out the key learnings towards attracting private capital for urban infrastructure in the context of the work done by the IWG during India's G20 Presidency.

The New Delhi Leaders Declaration (NDLD) 2023, has endorsed the Principles for Financing Cities of Tomorrow: sustainable, resilient, and inclusive as one of the key outcomes of the Infrastructure Working Group (IWG).

The principles encompass urban planning reforms, augmenting own source revenues, maximising investment efficiency, improving the creditworthiness of cities, using innovative financing instruments such as green, social, and sustainable bonds, creating a pipeline of investible projects, enabling regulatory environment and capacity augmentation of city administrations and institutional preparedness.

During the context setting of the workshop, Economic Affairs Secretary Ajay Seth said the purpose of this workshop is to integrate IWG's outcomes into India's domestic policy-making process and emphasise the potential and significance of cities of tomorrow as engines of socio-economic growth of the country.

Seth also emphasised on the need of planning 'cities of tomorrow' to be sustainable, resilient and inclusive.

During the session, Manoj Joshi, Secretary, MoHUA, brought up the need for long-term urban planning, unlocking the potential value of land, creating a conducive environment for attracting private financing and augmenting technical and institutional capacities.

Joshi also highlighted the need for cities to focus on increasing their own source revenues to enable them to finance urban infrastructure development.

He also underlined the need for value capture financing' of urban resources to overcome the financing gap in urban infrastructure projects.