Dubai: India will hold talks with several UAE-based real estate developers to discuss potential partnerships and investment opportunities, according to a government official.
“We are meeting a delegation of real estate developers (and) also talking to some of them individually over the next 2-3 days,” said Kunal Kumar, Joint Secretary and Mission Director (Smart Cities Mission), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India.
“The idea is to actually support some partnerships and find out some meaningful opportunities where all of us can work together,” said Kumar, during a briefing at the India Pavilion in Expo 2020.
India currently permits 100 per cent foreign direct investment through the automatic route in construction-development projects — townships, residential and commercial buildings, roads, bridges, hotels, resorts, hospitals, educational institutions, recreational facilities and city and regional-level infrastructure.
Major opportunity
India and UAE have had discussions in the past about investing in a wide range of sectors, including infrastructure.
During a visit earlier this month, India’s Commerce Minister said that Dubai-based developer Emaar and several UAE-based logistics companies had shown interest in investing in India’s infrastructure sector. He also said that UAE’s sovereign wealth funds were interested in making bigger investments, particularly in India’s road assets.
For Dubai-based firms, India offers a “great” opportunity in the real-estate, construction and mobility sectors, said Kumar. “The scale of opportunity in the country is so huge that it is an opportunity for global executives”
Going ‘smart’
India could soon be taking lessons from Dubai in smart city development.
“We had a meeting with Aisha Bin Bishr, the Director General of the Smart Dubai Office, and we discussed a lot of things we could do together,” said Kumar. “For example, we could actually work with a select group of cities and technology providers in India to talk about the Dubai experience”
Dubai government aims to make the emirate a smart city. It is building smart sustainable cities and delivering services through apps. It is also encouraging the gathering and sharing of data to develop and customise services for customer happiness.
“Since a lot of things have been developed here, those can become great learnings for cities in India – that’s one thing we talked about,” said Kumar.
The official said there was a plan to collaborate with tech companies and visit other pavilions such as the Siemens Pavilion and the Mobility Pavilion. “We would like to go there and see what exactly they have done”
In the Indian context, a smart city can be defined as an urban center that has amenities that work as intended, said Kumar. “When we say smart cities we mean cities that work for the people – if there’s a water tap, it should give me water (and) if there’s a street light, it should function the right way”
“Dubai is a city which keeps all its constituents happy whether it is businesses, software professionals or even taxi drivers,” said Kumar.
