Centre planning to increase JNNURM corpus

The Centre is planning to increase the corpus under the Jawharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) to Rs1,50,000crore from the present Rs1,00,000crore.

Stating that the Union Cabinet's approval was awaited, Union minister of state for urban development Saugata Roy told PTI that of the increase by Rs50,000lakh crore, the Centre's contribution would be Rs25,000lakh crore.

The Centre, he said, had started the Rs1lakh crore JNNURM scheme of which 50% was paid by it.

Roy said his ministry was looking for foreign funds to meet the resource gap and was negotiating for a $5bn loan from the World Bank to develop Indian cities, though it was yet to be finalised.

He said of the $5 bn, $3.5bn would be for infrastructure development and $1.5bn for development of urban transport.

The scheme now covered 65 mission cities along with their adjacent towns. "These schemes aim at improving urban infrastructure and governance through better water supply, sewerage, solid waste management etc," he said.

Replying to a question, Roy said that some states have made significant progress notably Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, while some like West Bengal and Delhi have fallen behind in terms of implementation of JNNURM projects.