The Confederation of Indian Industry and Indian Green Building Council (IGBC), have urged the Karnataka government to reduce property tax for green rated buildings in state. The industry body in a memorandum to Karnataka chief minister has further stated that there should be minimum environmental guidelines to be included in building bye-laws, all new government building should be green buildings and all new and proposed satellite towns and cities to be ‘green cities.’
This is an effort to increase the current number of 400 registered buildings amounting to more than 275 million square feet of green building footprint registered under IGBC. S Raghupathy, senior director and head, CII-Godrej Green Business Centre, stated that India today stands second in terms of green building footprint. The vision of IGBC is to become one of the world leaders in green buildings by 2010.
“India is witnessing tremendous growth in infrastructure and construction development. The construction industry in India is one of the largest economic activities and is growing at an average rate of 9.5 per cent as compared to the global average of 5 per cent. As the sector is growing rapidly preserving the environment poses a lot of challenges and at the same time presents opportunities.
The industry therefore needs to play its role and contribute towards environmental responsibility. The green building movement in India is a step in this direction - to minimise the negative impact of construction activity on the environment,” he added.
T Parabrahman, chairman, CII-Karnataka added that organisations and companies should take the lead among industries for reducing their energy usage and environmental impact.
To expand the scope of green buildings IGBC is planning to go to schools and educate the children on the importance of being ‘green’, and thus get the message across to the younger generation. “They can exert a better influence on the future than us,” noted IGBC official.
... proposes 12-point list for infrastructure sector
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) has proposed a 12-point agenda to boost infrastructure in the country. The recommendations released by the industry chamber on Thursday suggested that a separate ‘infrastructure budget’ be presented instead of just a Railway Budget.
Some other key recommendations include setting up a separate agency to facilitate and monitor infrastructure projects on the lines of the FIPB, adoption of 20 infrastructure projects of national importance and commitment for delivering the projects within a specified budget and time and setting up 20 domestic economic zones, said J P Nayak, chairman, CII Suminfra 2009, a two day summit on fast tracking infrastructure development through PPPs, organised by CII.
CII has also suggested independent regulatory authorities for various infrastructure activities and a new land bank corporation, public-private partnership (PPPs) in rural infrastructure projects like irrigation, cold storages and roads, dissemination of statistics on gross capital formation in infrastructure every quarter, energising infrastructure PSUs, creating mass transit rapid system in 20 top cities across the country and sectoral consensus-based templates for PPP bid process management, added Nayak. Earlier in his address at the summit, Nayak said that, India should spend nine per cent of the GDP on infrastructure projects which would help country to see sustain growth. He noted, China is spending 11 per cent and other developing countries are spending eight per cent of the total GDP on the infrastructure projects.
The investment means the government is creating long term assets, according to Nayak every Rs one spent on infrastructure would give Rs 1.8 to country’s GDP as return.
Lack of infrastructure will affect country’s growth and the government should give immediate focus to develop infrastructure.
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Private sector is likely to pump in around $44 billion (around Rs 2.20 lakh crore), of the $492 billion (around Rs 24.60 lakh crore) which was the project funding requirements for investment in infrastructure projects in the XI plan, according to a report which was published by Confederation of Indian Industry in association with Feedback Ventures.
The report which was released at Suminfra 2009, a two day seminar which was organised by Confederation of Indian Industry at Chennai added, budget and internal accruals from both centre and state governments would be in the tune of $290 billion (around Rs 14.50 lakh crore), borrowings by the governments would be $138 billion (around Rs 6.90 lakh crore) and borrowings by the private sector would be $101 billion (around Rs 5.05 lakh crore).
Infrastructure funds which are total target to raise $30 billion (around Rs 1.50 lakh crore) are focused on IndiaôAsia are expected to hit the market in 2009.
“There is a need to address the concerns of these funds while structuring projects for example providing exit for investment, termination payments etc,” said in the report.
