Sahara India launches JV with Turner Construction

Subrata Roy

India’s leading business conglomerate Sahara India  on Thursday announced joint venture with US-based German firm Turner Construction to provide all the business solutions related to infrastructure industry in India with Sahara holding 63 per cent state in the new venture. 

Announcing the joint venture company ‘Sahara Turner’ with world’s top construction company at a gala ceremony in Mumbai on Thursday, Subrata Roy, Managing Director and Chairman of Sahara India Pariwar, said that company will scale new heights in the real estate business.

The chief guardian of Sahara India further said that the Sahara Tuner will provide all the business solutions related to infrastructure industry to its clients. He also made it clear that Sahara India Pariwar will also be a one of the clients of Sahara Turner.

Under the flagship of Sahara Turner, Roy also promised to change the image of the country with high quality of constructions of houses.

Sahara India will have 63 percent stake in the Sahara Turner and rest will stay with Turner brothers, he said.

Speaking on the occasion Subrata Roy said that it is the first time in the 35 years long history of Sahara India Pariwar that the company has entered into a partnership. "We are happy that our first partner Turner Construction is a name to reckon with in the world with a glorious history of more than 200 years."

Peter J Davoren, President and Chief Executive Officer Turner Construction, said that he was humbled by the fact that Turner is partnering with Sahara, a company in which millions of people repose their faith, Sahara India’s online portal samaylive reported.

"It takes many years to build culture which is as important as the technical aspect of a company. We are happy that we are partnering with Sahara, a company based on robust corporate culture," he said.

Referring to JV Roy said that it took more than three years and numerous meetings, exchange of facts and figures to arrive at this marriage. A marriage which starts with clarity and transparency has potential to go long, he added.

Middle East Indians Eye Gujarat Realty Market

Ahmedabad: Investors of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and some other countries of the Middle East, such as Oman and Jordan, are believed to be interested in investing in Gujarat’s real estate market. This was revealed by the members of CREDAI-Gujarat chapter, who visited several countries of the Middle East recently.

The Gujarati realtors had gone on a seven-day tour of the Middle East to explore the possibility of attracting investment in the state from oil-rich Arab nations. The developers said investors from these countries are closely watching developments in the Indian economy as they are interested in investing in this country, particularly in Gujarat, a report from Daily Bhaskar said.

Gujarati realtors met investors in Muscat (Oman) and Amman (Jordan). “Investors in the Middle East are happy if they get around 5% annual appreciation of their investment in property. In comparison, the average return on investment in the real estate sector in Gujarat has been around 15% per annum. Hence, investors from the Middle East are interested in investing in Gujarat,” said Suresh Patel, vice president, Credai, Gujarat.

Realtors from the state said that NRGs in Muscat and Amman is affluent and influential.

Till now, NRGs used to invest in the Dubai realty market but now the tide has turned as the Dubai market has gone into a slump. “I have received a couple of enquiries from investors in Muscat and Jordan who are keen to invest here,” said Dinesh Patel, president, Gujarat, Credai. The inflow from the Middle East could be critical for the state’s realty sector as cash flow from domestic investors has dried up forcing developers to focus more on end-users (and not on investors) to sell their properties.

The CREDAI (Gujarat) delegation also visited several famous projects such as the Wave, in Muscat (Oman) and Almouj Golf, Oman’s first sea-facing golf course designed by the legendary Greg Norman, to understand the best practices in quality and service.
Credai Gujarat also plans to invite investors to Gujarat to have a feel and experience of the vibrancy of the state economy during Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors’ Summit-2013 and also at various property shows organised by Gujarat Institute of Housing and Estate Developers (GIHED).

Another big-fat order for L&T, Rs 1937 cr from GVK

Mumbai: Engineering and construction major Larsen & Toubro has bagged an order worth Rs 1937 crore from GVK for four-laning of a major portion of Shivpuri-Dewas section of NH-3 in Madhya Pradesh.

The 235 km national highway project, bagged by the group's construction arm L&T Construction, is expected to be completed in 27 months.

The order is for design, engineering, procurement and construction of the road project which is part of the phase IV of the National Highway Development Programme and is one of the mega projects of National Highway Authority of India, a company statement said.

Other major orders in 2012

L&T Construction’s  Water and Effluent Treatment business has bagged two major orders this month aggregating  1,262 crore. One order was secured from the Tamil Nadu Water Supply and Drainage Board for combined water supply scheme at various locations in Madurai, Sivagangai and Vellore districts in Tamil Nadu. Another major order worth Rs 794 crore has been received from Raipur Vikas Pradhikaran for the construction of underground storm water pipelines, sewerage, water supply and other associated works at Raipur.

Haryana plans high-tech cities around NCR

New Delhi: To enable economic development of the central NCR towns on par with Delhi, Haryana has planned to develop Gurgaon, Faridabad, Bahadurgarh and Sonipat and the government has agreed to the most of the recommendations of the National Development Council (NDC) sub-committee on urbanization.

This was stated by Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda at the second meeting of the sub-committee of National Development Council (NDC) on urbanisation at Vigyan Bhawan, here on Monday.

Bhupinder Singh Hooda

Hooda said the draft report proposes strategies for balanced development of the NCR so as to enable economic development of the central NCR towns on par with Delhi. “Haryana Government accords high priority to urban development and as such the budget provision for Urban Sector has been increased from Rs 4,434 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 6,917 crore in 2011-12,” Hooda said.

He also said that Haryana government agrees with most of the recommendations of the NDC Sub-Committee on Urbanisation, according to a Zee News report..
However, in the formulation of Model Municipal Law, devolution of powers, responsibilities and functions to the local governments and communities should be left to state governments, as the local issues of every state and urban local bodies are different.
Haryana, he said, has already prepared City Development Plans (CDP) for 74 towns of Haryana but sought Centre’s help to cover the needs of infrastructure, including roads, drains, water supply, sewerage etc., which required a huge investment of Rs 12,346 crore
Hooda said that Haryana Government has already notified Policy on Public Private Partnership (PPP).

One of the key features of this policy is to establish “Haryana Infrastructure Fund” for building the required infrastructure, he said, adding that the Centre may make adequate provisions in the 12th Five Year Plan for providing Viability Gap Funding (VGF) for PPP projects. He also sought enhancement in the VGF ceiling of 20 per cent.
Hooda stressed on the need to constitute an Urban Management Transport Authority for NCR so as to ensure an integrated transport planning. Haryana, he said, is the first state in the country to implement a metro project in Gurgaon through private investment.

He said for faster and modern urban transport facilities, including metros and Regional Rapid Transit Systems (RRTS) in the NCR cities are being actively considered and two priority corridors of RRTS – Delhi-Sonipat-Panipat and Delhi-Gurgaon-Alwar are highly capital intensive and asked Urban Development ministry to fund the same as the state was unable to do so.

Regarding provision of Metro services in the NCR area of Haryana Sub-Region, Hooda said that the work for extending Metro from Badarpur to YMCA chowk Faridabad will commence soon.

For extending Delhi Metro from Mundka (Delhi) to Bahadurgarh in Haryana, he said, it has already been decided that the Delhi portion of this project would be taken up in the supplementary part of Metro Phase-III, which needs to be expedited. For connecting IGI Airport New Delhi to IFFCO Chowk, Gurgaon via Dwarka, a scheme of high speed Metro Rail connectivity has been prepared with the help of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.

Realty strikes for women construction workers

Blame it on socio-economic conditions or technological advancement; the percentage of women folks at the construction sites has seen a drastic decline in the last one decade dipping sharply to under 10 per cent from its peak level of 35 per cent, according to a survey.

For decades, the construction industry has been an abode for the poor migrant families who toiled on construction sites - wife worked alongside her husband even as their children loitered around - to eke out a living in the city. At its peak, experts estimated that women wage labourers comprised up to 35% of total workers employed at constructions sites in india.

The percentage of women workers at construction sites during Commonwealth Games was averaged at 2%. At its peak, the Delhi Metro project employed 30,000 construction workers. Women were not even 5% of them, according to an ET report.

"Earlier many workers came to cities with their families. Today, many come alone, leaving behind their families," says Karan Singh, executive director (HR), DMRC. Anjali Alexander, chairperson, Mobile Creche, has seen the dip first hand. The number of children on the construction sites has gone down steeply because there are fewer women there, it said.

This shift can be attributed largely to the changes that the construction industry has undergone. About two decades back, labour cost was about 15-20% of the total project cost. Today that has come down to 5-12%. This is primarily because construction industry has become automated, mechanised and capital intensive.

As today most of the residential and commercial buildings are high-rise structures. Hence safety becomes the prime factor for the labourers, who are reluctant to bring their families at the site. Another factor which stops women to work in the site is the workability condition. Most of the contractors do not prefer the sari-clad women baoureres who can’t work as fast as their male counterpart.

"There are safety issues involved in high-rise construction and workers do not want to work with families there," he says. It is difficult to make sari-wearing women work on physically strenuous job on viaduct, says Karan Singh of DMRC.

Anjali recalls the time when Delhi was preparing for the Asian Games in the 1980s. When Moolchand flyover was being built, Rajasthani workers migrated with their families and there were shanties all over that grew into slums later, she recalls.
This time for the Commonwealth Games, they used a lot of pre-fabricated material for building flyovers etc. Due to automation there is a thrust on skilled workers, which are often men. While earlier, about 80% of labourers working on construction sites were unskilled, today that has gone down to 50-60%. "There are no head loaders today. From hot cement mix to others - machines have replaced quite a bit of labour," she adds.

There is another reason why women workers may be seeing a dip. In 1996, the Construction Worker Act specified that any construction project employing more than 60 women have to have a crache. This additional burden would have further encouraged contractors to scale down hiring of women workers.

Bigger shift

But this dip in number of women workers signals many changes underneath. One, it signals a shift in migration patterns of workers at the bottom end. While earlier, many desperate unskilled workers migrated with families for a livelihood today many are migrating alone. "We see a sharp rise in young single male worker working on the construction sites," says Amita Baviskar, sociologist, Institute of Economic Growth.

These young workers often work 14 hours a day as the projects have faster turnaround - from a typical 5-6 years earlier, today it has come down to 2.5-3 years - and return home after two-six months before coming back again. It helps that wage levels have gone up, the report further said.

"Earlier, they came and looked for settling down with families here in jhuggis," says Alexander. That is not so pronounced now. This makes the workers more footloose and mobile - a fact buttressed by the fact that many labourers from Bihar, UP are frequently shifting their destination of migration today.

NREGA  jobs

Partly, this shift in migration patterns may also have to do with changes in the rural economy and the households. Earlier, coming from poorer states like Bihar and West Bengal, there was virtually no employment for these women back home," says Singh of DMRC.

Now, National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) jobs, better political environment (like in Bihar), growing rural economy, rise in non-farm component in household incomes (which is both less volatile and more predictable) is boosting both employment and incomes in rural households. As a result many migrant workers prefer to leave behind their families back home.

There are two important side effects of NREGA that is helping too. One, NREGA sets the floor for the minimum wage in villages, which is being periodically revised by the government. For example, Singh of DMRC says the daily wages have gone up from 180 to 200 in the last six months.

Two, NREGA reduces gender discrimination in wages. S Sivakumar, CEO of ITC's agri-business, says that rural women workers typically earned 20-30% less than men for the same job. "With NREGA, for the first time, women are getting the same wage as men. And it has a bearing on their incomes," he says. Not to forget that living costs in the cities have surged and it makes sense for the workers to live alone and send more money back home for the family.

All this has had some positive impact. While NSSO latest data suggests that the income gap between rural and urban households have widened in the last five years. The percentage gap has gone up from 80% in 2004-05 to 91% in 2009-10. But in absolute terms, rural incomes have gone up and are powering consumption there, which has grown almost at par with the urban Indians, according to the NSSO data. The rural per capita consumption grew 6% in 2009-10 (1.2% in 2004-05) as against urban per capita consumption which rose by 6.8% in 2009-10 (2.9% in 2004-05).

The impact of all this is visible in some of the villages. "Women are far more visible on the farms today than they were in the past," says Sivakumar. They are also visible in jobs that were primarily a man's domain earlier, like spraying, harvesting etc, he adds. Also, it is not unusual to see a few retail shops in villages managed by women - a rarity in the past.

ASSOCHAM flays poor logistic support for steel industry

The Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM)  has advocated the importance of laying slurry pipelines to transport iron ore and coal for the steel industry which is cost effective and environment friendly.

Voicing concern over poor logistics infrastructure for supply of iron ore and coal for the steel industry, the apex business body said said slurry pipelines should be included in the list of industries with infrastructure status to address bulk transportation needs of the sector.

Moving iron ore and coal by pipelines in slurry form has advantages like low operating costs, higher availability and environment friendly. Existing railway lines are almost reaching a saturation point, ASSOCHAM said in a statement. 

“While augmenting railways infrastructure is important, slurry pipelines may eventually re-invent raw material transportation for the iron and steel industry,” it said in recommendations for the National Steel Policy being formulated. In 2008, the Planning Commission included pipelines for water and oil and gas eligible for infrastructure status but slurry pipelines were not, despite being recommended by the Rangarajan Committee.

The chamber said road and rail connectivity at the Braganza Ghat section near Goa must be doubled as the port’s capacity is being expanded manifold. Rail connectivity from Jaigarh port should be provided up to Kohlapur so that steel manufacturing units in Hospet Bellary region can benefit.

The ports proposed on Karnataka coast will depend on completion of Hubli-Ankola and Talguppa-Honavar rail lines to service the steel industry efficiently. ASSOCHAM said smaller ports too need to be provided with four-lane highways so that movement of imported coking coal can be improved.

“Finished steel products need to be moved expeditiously from the plants to ports as dynamic market conditions place heavy strains on logistic systems to deliver products to consumers in the shortest possible time at economical costs.”

Development of national highway 63 and state highways connecting Bellary to Chitradurga, Hubli and Solapur will allow multi-axle load vehicles to speedily move freight of finished steel to south India, it said.

Indians need 500 mn houses in ten years: FICCI

New Delhi: As many as half a billion Indians would require new homes in the country's various cities over the next decade, a requirement equivalent to all of China, North America and Western Europe put together, according to a FICCI report.

The report 'Urban Infrastructure in India', prepared by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), said the country's population is slated to grow to 1.7 billion by 2050 and rapid urbanisation will add nearly 900 million people to Indian cities.

"City capacity will need to grow nearly 400 per cent in less than 50 years. This is the scale of urbanisation and urban infrastructure needs India has to contend with in the face of grossly inadequate urban infrastructure to meet the demands of the existing urban population," it said.

There is insurmountable pressure on civic infrastructure systems such as water supply, sewerage and drainage and solid waste management, a PTI report quoting FICCI, said.

Highlighting the deficiencies in the urban infrastructure procurement process, the report said that Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and government procurement in relation to urban infrastructure focuses more on construction of the facility rather than on the long-term operation and maintenance of the facility.
Maintaining that Indian ULBs have a weak fiscal and financial base that hampers their ability to provide efficient services to citizens, the industry body said that, "There is no framework governing or providing for maintenance of common spaces, particularly areas such as markets, housing colonies, bridges, footpaths, street lighting, play-grounds, common green and open areas."

Urban infrastructure, more than any other sector, faces the drag of multiple authorities having jurisdiction over different aspects of the same infrastructure facility, it added. "We have to rethink the way we live or there is no tomorrow," FICCI’s Urban Development Committee Chairman, Pradeep Puri said.

It recommended that government authorities shift the focus of their contracts for new facilities from merely construction works contracts to performance-based maintenance contracts under which the scope and obligations of the contractor would be mentioned.

"Undertake maintenance of the facility for a minimum number of years; and link disbursement of money evenly over the period of construction/maintenance," it added.

Indian planning norms have been borrowed mainly from the West and need important modifications, it said, adding there should be a 'Mission on Urban Planning'.