JOIN USThe GIFT (Gujarat International Finance Tec-City) in Gujarat deserves to be emulated for effectively setting up a smart city with no cost to the exchequer, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Monday said in a Facebook post.
Praising the world class infrastructure at GIFT, Jaitly said, “State governments will be well advised to send their teams to study this success story.”
“The GIFT City is intended to be a global financial hub. It will have an international financial service centre which is a financial sector SEZ,” the minister wrote two days after inaugurating it. GIFT, which was conceived by Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was the chief minister of Gujarat, is a joint venture project between Gujarat Urban Development Company and the IL&FS. Jaitley pointed out how the Gujarat government had used wasteland to create state-of-the-art infrastructure within the project that is spread over 800 acres of land.
“All infrastructural facilities are located underground. There is an underground tunnel in which electric wires, pipelines, garbage collection, and all other maintenance facilities are located. The tap water in the city itself is purified to become drinking water. The air conditioning is maintained through water chillers. The infrastructural tunnel is big enough for a vehicle to drive through it,” he said.
The first phase of the city is to be completed in 2016. The entire city would be completed in three phases, concluding with 2026. All financial sector activities, which include banking, insurance, capital market operations, intermediaries from all over the world, are going to be located in the city, Jaitley said.
Both Central and state governments have announced several tax cuts for the international financial sector.