The Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) is considering raising ₹8,500 crore funds for the smart city initiative from Municipal bonds and multilateral funding agencies. Commissioner of NMMC, Dinesh Waghmare told BusinessLine that a number of infrastructure projects would be undertaken under the initiative for, which innovative funding strategies have to be devised.

Earlier, NMMC had considered floating Municipal bonds but as treasury had ₹800 crore surplus, the plan was junked.

Now, with large-scale capital requirement, the plan is again being revived. Funding can also be accessed from Asian Development Bank for which talks are already under way, he said.

In February, the Chief Minster of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, had decided to allow the municipal corporations to raise money through the bond market.

Waghmare said that other agencies such as the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) will also shoulder the responsibility of raising the funds for the municipal area.

He said that the initiatives will come up over the next five years for which the Maharashtra government and the Centre will provide a combined budgetary grant of ₹1,000 crore.

Navi Mumbai has cleared the initial rounds of national selection for the smart city initiative. The final list of the cities, which would be developed as smart cities, will be announced on January 26, 2016.

The city is expected to make it to the list, as it was conceived as a planned city with basic infrastructure amenities designed from day-one of the planning.

Waghmare said that as the city is being developed in a planned manner since 1970s, new Greenfield development is not possible. But the existing systems such as transportation, water supply and waste water can be retrofitted using smart technologies.

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