Gujarat will soon get India’s largest industrial exhibition centre, in Gandhinagar. It is slated to be almost double the size of New Delhi’s Pragati Maidan.
As against Pragati Maidan’s exhibition area of 67,000 square metres, the new complex will have an area of 1.40 lakh sq m. The centre will have a massive column-less industrial exhibition centre.
The “International Exhibition Complex”, designed as a single-venue concept, will be developed by the India International Textile Machinery Exhibition Society (IITMES), with an investment of nearly Rs 500 crore, at the upcoming Gujarat International Finance Tec-City Company Ltd (GIFT) premises in the State Capital.
GIFT has allotted development rights to IITMES for the designer centre, to be specifically built for holding international industrial exhibitions.
Work on the first phase to develop 36,000 sq m will begin in January and the centre will be thrown open for exhibitions in 2014. Work on the second phase will be completed in the next three to four years, said Seema Srivastava, Executive Director, IITMES, and R. K. Jha, Director, GIFT, here on Friday.
IITMES and GIFT had signed a MoU at Vibrant Gujarat 2011 in this regard.
Investment
For the first phase, IITMES has lined up an investment of Rs 187 crore, with 1:1 debt-equity ratio with Exim Bank participation. The Society has also engaged Mumbai’s architect Ratan Botliboy and would soon select a leading developer for the turnkey project.
For running the complex, IITMES will entrust the job to a professional management company, expecting to make the centre operational 260 days in a year.
The centre will create 1,000 direct job opportunities and many more indirect ones. The facility will require nearly 10,000 hotel rooms in three to five star categories and 15,000 in budget category. GIFT has already invited proposals for development of world-class hotel and clubs in phase one, Mr Jha said.
While 3,500 rooms are currently available in Ahmedabad and Gandhinagar, about 700 will be added in the next few months. Besides, GIFT itself plans to develop 5,000 rooms through various hotel groups in the 886-acre area allotted to it by the Gujarat Government to set up India’s first planned financial city near Gandhinagar.
Besides, the Ahmedabad-Gandhinanagar Metro station will be located right next to the exhibition centre to provide connectivity.