Extremely happy to participate in Listing Event of Ghaziabad’s Green Municipal Bonds of ₹150 cr on @BSEIndia in august presence of Hon’ble MoS @MORTHIndia & Minister of Urban Development, Uttar Pradesh today. These are the first ‘Green Municipal Bonds’ of the country.

In the last 3 years, 10 other cities have issued Municipal Bonds. Amongst these 2 cities are from Gujarat, 2 from Andhra Pradesh, 2 from Madhya Pradesh, now 2 from Uttar Pradesh & 1 each from Maharashtra & Telangana.

@AMRUTCityGzb

With today’s addition, ₹3,940 cr has been raised by 10 cities through Municipal Bonds. My Ministry is working with various cities to issue municipal bonds in at least fifty of them by 2024. Issuance of Bonds completely transforms cities’ governance & financial structures.

Credit rating of cities at large scale was taken up for the first time under AMRUT. So far it has been done for 460 cities. Out of them, 161 have investable grades i.e. B or above ratings. 39 cities including Ghaziabad had A or above higher grades.

However, unless cities attain AA+ grades, they will raise Bonds at much higher rates. For ex, a city with grade A may pick Bonds in the market @ 10% & for grade B, this may go up @ 12-13%. Ghaziabad with AA+ rating has raised Bond @ 8.1%, the most competitive/cheapest so far.

I highly commend Nagar Nigam Ghaziabad for upgrading their grade to AA+ in last 2 years. I urge other cities with investible grades to work with transaction advisors to improve their governance/ financial structures to upgrade to AA+ & then raise Bonds of any value.

This is a transformative path.

My big compliments to Ghaziabad city administration for committing ₹150 cr raised today for an environmentally sustainable project of waste water tertiary treatment plant, whose water will be used by Sahibabad Industrial Estate.

In the last 6 years, India has taken up world’s most comprehensive urban development schemes/ program, like of which has not been experienced in any part of the globe so far. Over ₹12 lakh crore has been invested in this period in urban areas.

My Ministry has launched various flagship urban missions envisioned by Hon’bl PM since 2014. These include @SwachhBharatGov, @amrut_MoHUA, @pmayurban, @SmartCities_HUA, @NULM_MoHUA, @pmsvanidhi, Affordable Rental Housing Scheme & @ut_MoHUA & massive Metro Rails extensions etc.

Now our 100 smart cities have turned into lighthouses so that other cities may learn from them & build all future infrastructure & facilities with smart features to get ‘more from less’ & ensure sustainable development. These projects will provide ease of living to the citizens.

We would like to develop all 4,372 cities & those coming up in future develop smartly.

Since 2017, under decisive leadership of Hon’ble CM @myogiadityanath, Uttar Pradesh has improved its performance in transforming State’s urban landscape tremendously.

They have taken major strides under all flagship urban missions. State & its cities stand quite high in national level performance.

Cities are engines of economic growth. Raising Municipal Bond is a positive step towards making AatmaNirbharNagar.

Heartiest congratulations to Ghaziabad MC for getting listed on BSE today. Surely it is step forward on Hon’ble CM’s vision of taking State’s economy to US$1 trillion.

Such initiatives in making cities AatmaNirbhar & taking up sustainable urban development projects will definitely help #TransformingUrbanLandscape & realising Hon’ble PM’s vision of an #AatmaNirbharBharat.