New urban sector initiatives like the Smart City Mission and Housing for All Mission came in for extensive discussion between the Minister of Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation and high level delegations from Siemens AG and the UNO and UNDP.

A five member delegation led by Mr.Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens and Mr. Dipak Parekh of HDFC Bank met Shri Naidu and discussed possible areas of involvement in the Smart City Mission. Mr.Kaeser referred to the growing presence in India of Siemens over the last 45 years and evinced keen interest to further deepen partnership in India’s growth story in the context of new initiatives in urban sector.

The delegation said that given the experience and expertise of Siemens, the company is in a position to offer integrated solutions to potential smart cities covering the areas of urban infrastructure, energy, security, waste management and governance platforms and ranging from planning to execution. The delegation also referred to a Memorandum of Understanding signed with Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) for partnering in Smart City Mission based on a consortium approach. President of Siemens said that the company has the ideas, technologies and identified financing partners in Deutsche Bank and KFW to assist the potential smart cities.

Mr. Venkaiah Naidu suggested that Siemen’s representatives and senior officials of the ministry should hold further discussions on evolving a template for city-wise integrated solutions for the consideration of urban local bodies.

A delegation from the UN and UNDP led by Mr.Yuri Afansiev, Resident Coordinator of UN and Resident Representative of UNDP also met Mr. Venkaiah Naidu and explored the areas of possible cooperation in the implementation of new urban sector initiatives. Mr.Afansiev suggested that use of pre-fabricated housing technologies should be adopted on a large scale to meet the ambitious housing targets of the Government.

Mr.  Naidu referred to the efforts being made by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Technology to promote pre-fabricated housing technologies and suggested that a few pilot projects could be taken up after further discussions for promoting such construction under the housing mission.