The Next Biggest India Investment - Gujarat

By Vipin Agnihotri

Unbelievable but true, the economy of Gujarat is growing faster than some of the Asian economies. As a matter of fact, Gujarat is probably the only state of India witnessing a double-digit growth for a long time and also the only state growing higher than the country’s 8-9 percent economic growth.

It is worth mentioning in this regard that the Planning Commission has given Gujarat the highest growth target of 11.2 percent in the 11^th Five Year Plan as compared to 10.2 percent achieved during the 10^th Plan. In my opinion, labour harmony, infrastructure development, transparent policies and prudent State fiscal management have contributed to the growth of Gujarat.

The pivotal factor here is that man days lost due to labour unrest in Gujarat is only 0.65 percent as against 5 percent in Maharashtra. If experts are to be believed, the agriculture growth of Gujarat is over 10 percent, which is well above the national average. Not so long ago, Gujarat’s agricultural income was only Rs 9,000 crore. At this moment of time, it has gone up to Rs 34,000 crore. This income directly goes to farmers.

Gujarat is also the first state in the country to start ‘river grid’ process. It has come into the notice of The India Street that Gujarat has already linked close to two dozen rivers. Point to be noted here is that Gujarat is a state that faces famine in seven out of ten years. Bur with new initiatives like river linking, water harvesting and a green evolution project, there is no doubt that Gujarat is making strides in the agricultural space.

Gujarat government is trying to emulate Amsterdam and Singapore in port development. There are signs that roads of Gujarat will be as good as Autobahns of Germany in the near future. On the other hand, chemical and petrochemical industry of Gujarat will be comparable to that of Japan. Gujarat has the maximum number of airports. As a matter of fact, in the Kutch district alone Gujarat have as many five airports. Moreover, Bharuch is emerging as an oil and gas, chemical and petrochemical hub in India.

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After US & UAE, Singapore gets bullish on India’s property boom

Impressed by the buoyancy of Indian real estate, Singapore property firms are seeing to establish their presence in the country with high profile projects.

To name a few, there is RSP Architects, The WIRE Group, CPG Group and JTC Corp’s Jurong International, sitting on projects totaling more than 500 million sq ft of floor space.

Jurong International is coming up with a Mega Township in Amritsar. The project will spread over 80Ha. Close on the heels is RSP Architects with a project concerning development of a 1 million sq ft IT Park in Bangalore.

When the craze of developing Special Economic Zone (SEZs) in India has overpowered the domestic builders, how can the international developers stay behind? Joining the SEZ race is CPG Group, a new player from Singapore, who is all set to build a SEZ over the land of 13,000Ha in Mundra, Gujarat.

To see the involvement of Singapore real estate firms in broader way, picture the available office space in Singapore’s Central region, including the shopping malls and corporate towers in its downtown core and Orchard Road. Multiplying the figure by 4 will give the exact sense of business. Entire of which in India is solely being handled by a single Singapore design company – RSP Architects.

Even smaller players, such as CPG, are incredibly busy. CPG has at least 30 million sq ft of projects completed or under construction. Apart from biggies like Jurong which has as much as half of it, other small players, such as CPG, are also busy in pushing their property projects on course.

A number of important real estate projects in Tier II cities like Hyderabad are in hands of Singapore architects. Around some US $45 billion worth of projects are under construction across in India, says the data showcased by property surveys.