Modi launches first greenfield smart industrial city Auric;

Prime Minister Narendra Modi Saturday inaugurated the country's first greenfield industrial smart city, Auric City, at Shendra here, which is projected to attract around Rs 70,000 crore in investments on completion. The mega project in the parched region of Marathawada region of Maharashtra is part of the upcoming Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, and is expected to boost the overall development of the historically backward region.

Auric City is also touted to be the country's first 'walk-to-work' smart industrial city which will encourage housing options, workplaces, and shopping centres, to be developed in the vicinity of each other. Inaugurating the administrative headquarters of the smart city--Auric Hall-- from where the entire industrial city and its facilities will be operated, Modi said Aurangabad is not only becoming a new smart city but also is going to become a centre of the nation's industrial activities and once fully operational will create lakhs of jobs.

Dedicating it to the nation, Modi said, "in the new- age digital era ecosystem, requirements of businesses are rapidly evolving and such businesses which frame their value proposition on smart technologies, it makes sense to provide them a comprehensive ecosystem that itself is smart." Meanwhile at another function, Modi announced that the Ujjwala scheme, under which the government gives subsidized cooking gas connections to poor families, has crossed the 8th crore mark much ahead of targeted timeline. "Not only we have fulfilled our promise but also have achieved the goal seven months before the promised time. Of these 8 crore LGP connections, nearly 44 lakh are given in Maharashtra alone," Modi said, adding "our efforts is to see that every family in the country has an LPG connection." In the first 50 years since LPG came to the country, only 13 crore connections were given, but in the past 60 months, as many 14 crore connections were given, helping increase the cooking gas penetration over 96 percent now from 55 percent in 2014, he said.

The lucky 8th crore customer was one Ayesha Sheikh Rafique of Aurangabad, while he also gave away a LPG connection to one Nargis Begum from the troubled Kashmir. Modi also addressed a large gathering of women's self help group, attended by tens of thousands of stakeholders.

On housing, he said his government is moving fast on providing house to everyone by 2022 and that about 180 lakh homes have already been constructed till now. Stating that the objective is "not to build houses but help create affordable homes of your dreams with maximum facilities," he said to achieve this the government did not adopt any fixed formula but tried to build homes that included the needs and wish of local people.

Addressing the function, state industries minister Subhash Desai said, "Auric City is expected to attract Rs 60,000-70,000 crore investments from global players, which will generate lakhs of jobs. The city is expected to earn USD 11.6 billion in exports on an output of over USD 46 billion, Desai claimed, and said the city has already attracted investment of Rs 3,600 crore as of end 2018 from around 50 units.

He said the state has already approved a Rs 7,947- crore infrastructure package to help Auric offer high-value, sustainable infrastructure. Some of the leading investors who have already taken space in the city include South Korean conglomerate Hyosung Corporation, and the world's largest spandex producer Perkins, which is a American conglomerate Caterpillar among others, Desai said, adding several more companies from the US, Europe, Russia, China, Japan and Korea are interested in Auric.

Already multinationals like Skoda Auto, Siemens, J&J, Perkins, Liebherr, and Endress+Hauser, and domestic companies like Lupin, Bajaj,Crompton Greaves,Wockhardt etc are operating near Auric City..

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)