Smaller cities of Gujarat that have a high growth in urban population have very less number of real estate projects, remarked Amarjeet Singh, chairman of Real Estate Regulatory Authority (RERA) in Gujarat. He also lamented that most projects in Vadodara do not have planning for sewage requirements.
Singh was delivering his address at Growth Ambassador Summit organised by CREDAI – Gujarat in the city on Monday. He brought to the attention of the realtors that cities in districts like Kutch, Banaskantha, Sabarkantha, Bharuch, Valsad and Bhavnagar have witnessed fastest urbanisation during the decade 2000-10. But here, there are very few real estate projects. "Here the growth in urbanization is over 50 per cent, but they have the least number of real estate projects," said at the gathering of over 3,000 realtors from across the state. More real estate projects will also bring more jobs for the locals, he added. Nilam Doshi, vice president of Gujarat Institute of Housing and Estate Developers (GIHED – CREDAI) said that this indicates that there is an opportunity for real estate projects in smaller cities.
Singh also said that of the 147 projects in Vadodara that were registered with RERA, 146 projects had no provisioning for sewage. He suggested that developers should also consider having such provisions. In Gujarat, close to 6,000 projects have been registered with RERA, with an investment of close to Rs 2,00,000 crore.
Mukesh Puri, additional chief secretary in Urban Development and Urban Housing department said that Gujarat has close to 2.57 crore of urban population, which means that 43 per cent of state population live in cities.