First phase of Chennai-Sirusseri IT corridor by June

Chennai: The first phase of the Chennai-Sirusseri IT corridor covering the first 20-km will be opened by June 2008. The next phase, covering the entire 50-km stretch from Chennai to Mamallapuram will be ready in a couple of years, Tamil Nadu chief secretary LK Tripathi said.

The project costs Rs 6-8 crore per km to implement and investments will total over Rs 300 crore for the first and second phases.

Speaking at a Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) seminar on real estate trends in India, Tripathi said the Chennai-Sriperumbudur corridor was expected to stretch beyond Ranipet and Hosur.

The private sector can also play a key role in developing the Chennai-Chenglepet corridor, Chennai-Kanyakumari road network and several coastal roads, he added.

The real estate sector in India is facing the challenge of ensuring inclusive growth while taking up large-scale projects with a futuristic vision and in-built support systems for energy, environment and water conservation.

“The private sector should make use of emerging opportunities in public-private partnerships in infrastructure development,” Tripathi said.

He noted the need to innovatively tap financial resources to develop high quality, large-scale infrastructure projects in roads, ports, airports and housing.

State government agencies such as Sipcot, Tidco and Housing Board are inviting private participation in creating infrastructure.

The real estate industry in India is booming and will continue to do so for the next 10 to 15 years, thanks to sustained economic growth and in particular of the IT/ITeS sector that will generate more jobs and surplus income, said Rajnikant S Ajmera, president, Confederation of Real Estate Developers Associations of India.

Ajmera said the real estate industry had been witnessing sea changes in terms of improved quality of services and fast adoption of latest technologies. The industry now faces the need to go in for pre-built materials and pre-mixed concrete to complete projects speedily.

He noted that input prices – especially cement and steel – have been skyrocketing and the industry has to deal with the highest number of regulations. He emphasised the need to introduce liberal policies around self-regulation of the industry that would enhance transparency and remove procedural delays in the system.

V Srinivasan, past president, CII, and chairman of WS Industries Ltd, said the real estate sector was the second largest employment generator in the country. For every rupee invested in construction, 78 paise is added to the GDP. Real estate is a growth engine for development of over 269 allied industries, giving a boost to construction, steel and cement sectors.

The industry in India is at present worth $12 billion. Growing at a 30 per cent peg per annum, it is expected to reach $90 billion by 2015. The FDI component of the domestic real estate market is likely to touch $30 billion by 2015, as against the total size of $102 billion in the next ten years, as the growth of the real estate sector will pick up at more than 30 per cent. The demand for residential space is likely to touch 2,166 million sft by 2012.