Centre’s drive to fast-track smart city projects opportunity for OOH to dig deep

Even as the OOH industry looks to identify and tap business opportunities in the different smart city projects that are underway, the Central Government’s push for fast-tracking the projects might give the OOH players a greater reason to dig deeper into this space to leverage the likely business opportunities. The Centre has planned to give about Rs 3,700 crore as incentive to states for faster completion of smart city projects in its bid to motivate the local governments to expedite works. Few cities will earn additional budget, which will be selected through a competition. PM Narendra Modi has instructed all the chief secretaries of states to monitor the progress of smart city projects for early completion.

"He appreciated the participation of cities in the challenge route. He said the challenge before everyone is now to ensure implementation and expeditious completion of the work in the 90 identified cities, with high quality," an official release from PMO said.

"PM said the cities have been selected, projects are ready and now the focus should be on completion and global standards should be bench mark for these works. He asked the chief secretaries to review progress of projects of each selected city," an official said.

The competition would start soon.