International experts on technologies and smart cities along with urban development officials from across India - constituting 600 cities, covering the100 smart cities and 500 AMRUT cities - came together at the Hyderabad International Convention Centre to participate in the National Conclave on Smart Technologies.

The land acquisition bill would lead to further holding up of the infrastructure projects where many projects are already languishing due to the failure of authorities to acquire the necessary land for development.

If you thought only BOT projects were in trouble, think again. The faltering roads sector is increasingly dependent on sentiment, and this dependence is clear from the recent negativity that has crept even into EPC. Bringing back investor sentiment should now be supreme.

Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) projects do have certain advantages which amount to lesser amount of risk for the private company. While a successful EPC road project

Since rural road development is very slow in process, most of the large roads developers have not shown interest. However, Goutham Reddy, Chairman, Ramky Infrastructure, talking to Sumantra Das says government initiative or incentive

In Waste Management we have seen some large projects like MCD (Delhi), GHMC (Hyderabad) and COC (Chenn­ai) have taken positive steps towards privatisation of Munici­pal Waste Management and loo­k­ing to improve the qua­lity of waste management.

Over the last four years there has been increased private sector par­ticipation in infrast­ructure via Public Private Partnerships (PPP), and as an objective but active participant in docu­menting this growth,

From what model of PPP will work in our urban wastewater management to how they can move from a mostly secondary treatment to tertiary and make water viable, policymakers, city administrators and wastewater practitioners offer solutions.

Service tax exemption of 25 per cent from taxable value is being provided to services of transport of coastal goods and goods transported through national waterways or inland water with no CENVAT credit of taxes paid on inputs, input services and capital goods. The effective service tax rate is 7.725 per cent.