A tale of two (smart) cities
Almost three weeks after the signing of the formal agreement to create SmartCity Malta at Ricasoli, pen was put to paper to make the second SmartCity outside Dubai a reality. An agreement was signed last Sunday for Kochi, in the state of Kerala in...
Almost three weeks after the signing of the formal agreement to create SmartCity Malta at Ricasoli, pen was put to paper to make the second SmartCity outside Dubai a reality. An agreement was signed last Sunday for Kochi, in the state of Kerala in India.
The event was organised by Malta-based BPC International, entrusted with the organisation after the successful and smooth signing ceremony in Malta.
An official statement said SmartCity Kochi would be one of India's largest business parks and "will create an infrastructure and environment for knowledge-industry companies - primarily IT and media-related firms - to grow and flourish, based on the successful models of Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City."
This sounds very much like the scope of SmartCity Malta but there are some significant differences between the projects, especially in their size.
SmartCity Kochi will attract an investment of about $350 million, a little more than Malta's $300 million. It is estimated it will have a built-up space of one million square metres and create 90,000 "high-paying" jobs over the next 10 years, a figure much higher than the 5,600 jobs in a project covering 356,200 square metres in Malta.
The same investors, namely Tecom Investments and Sama Dubai, and the same top officials, namely Tecom executive chairman Ahmad bin Byat, Sama Dubai executive chairman Farhan Faraidooni, and SmartCity executive director Fareed Abdulrahman presided over the signing ceremony last Sunday. A noticeable difference was that these officials were clad in their traditional Arab dress and not in Western-style jacket and tie like in Malta.
The agreement was signed by the chief secretary of Kerala state, Lizzie Jacob, in the presence of V. S. Achuthanandan, the chief minister of Kerala.
The memorandum of understanding had been signed in September 2005 by the party which is now in opposition.
According to the unofficial YourSmartcity.com website, set up to lobby for SmartCity, Indian states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were also interested in the project. The signing was widely reported in national and regional Indian newspapers and Middle East news services, with criticism for both the Maltese and Indian projects in the respective countries sometimes echoing each other.
The online edition of the Indian newspaper The Financial Express last February reported that the signing was going to happen only "after troubleshooting by Dubai-based Emke Group chief MK Yusuf Ali".
"The sore spot is the state government stakes. Mr Achuthanandan had been adamant that the Tecom project can be facilitated in Kochi only if Kerala government gets a 26 per cent share," the news service said.
The Maltese government negotiated a nine per cent equity in the project.
The Gulf Times revealed that the agreement had been rewritten seven times and the project was only cleared when the chief minister began to take steps to float a global tender for the project.
Monster and Critics news website also revealed that the agreement does not include the transfer of the Infopark campus at Kochi, which had been agreed upon by the previous chief state minister Chandy.
"While he had agreed to sell 236 acres of land at a cost of Rs.260 million (Lm2 million) and given Dubai Internet City full ownership, Mr Achuthanandan made them agree to 246 acres of land at a cost of Rs.1.06 billion (Lm8.2 million), which would be given on lease for 99 years. Furthermore Chandy had agreed to 33,000 new jobs being created by SmartCity, but Mr Achuthanandan got them increased to 90, 000," the news service said.
The Hindu, an Indian national newspaper, quoted Mr bin Byat saying that the actual size of the investment that would flow into the project would be known once the master plan was ready. Tecom expects to get the master plan ready within a year.
Middle East-based ITP Technology news website revealed that the terms of the deal were heavily revised; SmartCity is now paying $24.5 million for a 99-year lease on the land, as opposed to the $6.38 million it had reportedly offered to buy the land outright."
Gulf News website in the United Arab Emirates, where Dubai is located, was one of the very few news media to explain that 70 per cent of the buildings will be for IT and IT-enabled services. In contrast only 46 percent of the built-up area at Ricasoli will be dedicated to IT.
Another news service in the region, Arab News, said the first building was expected to be completed within 18 months, similar to the time-frames agreed for Malta.
The Peninsula, the daily newspaper of Qatar, reported that Minister Achuthanandan was upbeat at the signing ceremony but recalled how the same politician as the opposition leader 12 months ago had called Tecom "a mere real estate company".
According to the 2007 edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit e-readiness index covering 69 countries worldwide, Malta placed better than the United Arab Emirates and India. While Malta placed 24th, above several other European countries, the UAE was ranked 33rd, down three places from last year, while India ranked 54th.
A country's "e-readiness" indicates the level of adoption of information technology in business and other sectors of society, including the use of digital goods and services by individual citizens.
The event was organised by Malta-based BPC International, entrusted with the organisation after the successful and smooth signing ceremony in Malta.
An official statement said SmartCity Kochi would be one of India's largest business parks and "will create an infrastructure and environment for knowledge-industry companies - primarily IT and media-related firms - to grow and flourish, based on the successful models of Dubai Internet City and Dubai Media City."
This sounds very much like the scope of SmartCity Malta but there are some significant differences between the projects, especially in their size.
SmartCity Kochi will attract an investment of about $350 million, a little more than Malta's $300 million. It is estimated it will have a built-up space of one million square metres and create 90,000 "high-paying" jobs over the next 10 years, a figure much higher than the 5,600 jobs in a project covering 356,200 square metres in Malta.
The same investors, namely Tecom Investments and Sama Dubai, and the same top officials, namely Tecom executive chairman Ahmad bin Byat, Sama Dubai executive chairman Farhan Faraidooni, and SmartCity executive director Fareed Abdulrahman presided over the signing ceremony last Sunday. A noticeable difference was that these officials were clad in their traditional Arab dress and not in Western-style jacket and tie like in Malta.
The agreement was signed by the chief secretary of Kerala state, Lizzie Jacob, in the presence of V. S. Achuthanandan, the chief minister of Kerala.
The memorandum of understanding had been signed in September 2005 by the party which is now in opposition.
According to the unofficial YourSmartcity.com website, set up to lobby for SmartCity, Indian states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu were also interested in the project. The signing was widely reported in national and regional Indian newspapers and Middle East news services, with criticism for both the Maltese and Indian projects in the respective countries sometimes echoing each other.
The online edition of the Indian newspaper The Financial Express last February reported that the signing was going to happen only "after troubleshooting by Dubai-based Emke Group chief MK Yusuf Ali".
"The sore spot is the state government stakes. Mr Achuthanandan had been adamant that the Tecom project can be facilitated in Kochi only if Kerala government gets a 26 per cent share," the news service said.
The Maltese government negotiated a nine per cent equity in the project.
The Gulf Times revealed that the agreement had been rewritten seven times and the project was only cleared when the chief minister began to take steps to float a global tender for the project.
Monster and Critics news website also revealed that the agreement does not include the transfer of the Infopark campus at Kochi, which had been agreed upon by the previous chief state minister Chandy.
"While he had agreed to sell 236 acres of land at a cost of Rs.260 million (Lm2 million) and given Dubai Internet City full ownership, Mr Achuthanandan made them agree to 246 acres of land at a cost of Rs.1.06 billion (Lm8.2 million), which would be given on lease for 99 years. Furthermore Chandy had agreed to 33,000 new jobs being created by SmartCity, but Mr Achuthanandan got them increased to 90, 000," the news service said.
The Hindu, an Indian national newspaper, quoted Mr bin Byat saying that the actual size of the investment that would flow into the project would be known once the master plan was ready. Tecom expects to get the master plan ready within a year.
Middle East-based ITP Technology news website revealed that the terms of the deal were heavily revised; SmartCity is now paying $24.5 million for a 99-year lease on the land, as opposed to the $6.38 million it had reportedly offered to buy the land outright."
Gulf News website in the United Arab Emirates, where Dubai is located, was one of the very few news media to explain that 70 per cent of the buildings will be for IT and IT-enabled services. In contrast only 46 percent of the built-up area at Ricasoli will be dedicated to IT.
Another news service in the region, Arab News, said the first building was expected to be completed within 18 months, similar to the time-frames agreed for Malta.
The Peninsula, the daily newspaper of Qatar, reported that Minister Achuthanandan was upbeat at the signing ceremony but recalled how the same politician as the opposition leader 12 months ago had called Tecom "a mere real estate company".
According to the 2007 edition of the Economist Intelligence Unit e-readiness index covering 69 countries worldwide, Malta placed better than the United Arab Emirates and India. While Malta placed 24th, above several other European countries, the UAE was ranked 33rd, down three places from last year, while India ranked 54th.
A country's "e-readiness" indicates the level of adoption of information technology in business and other sectors of society, including the use of digital goods and services by individual citizens.