The Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board (HMWS&SB) will mortgage its properties, such as storage-cum-supply reservoirs and hundreds of acres of land in which sewerage treatment plants (STPs) are located, to raise a loan of Rs 2,000 crore to complete Phase-I of the Godavari drinking water project.
The Godavari project will bring 180 million gallons of water a day to the city once its first phase is commissioned. Work on the project has been speeded up as the target set for completing and commissioning it is a couple of months before the 2014 Assembly elections. The state government has released Rs 1,250 crore for the Godavari project. The Water Board requires another Rs 2,000 crore to complete the work. Housing Urban Development Corporation (HUDCO), a government of India undertaking, has in principle agreed to give the loan for the Godavari project.
The Water Board has prepared a list of two dozen properties together worth Rs 2,500 crore that will be mortgaged. The properties are spread across Hyderabad, Ranga Reddy and Medak districts. The list will be submitted to HUDCO soon. The total cost of Phase-I of the Godavari project is Rs 3,375 crore and another Rs 500 crore will be needed to lay the distribution network within the city and connect and interlink the Godavari system with the supply and distribution network of Krishna Phase-I and Phase-II, Manjira, Singur, Osmansagar and Himayatsagar.
When contacted, Water Board engineer-in-chief and director of projects, M. Satyanarayana, confirmed to this newspaper that the Board will mortgage its properties. “We are submitting a list of properties, and it is up to HUDCO or its appointed agency to finalise the properties and conduct valuation of the properties. For a Rs 1,000 crore loan, properties worth Rs 1,125 crore have to be mortgaged. So for a Rs 2,000 crore loan, properties worth over Rs 2,250 crore have to be mortgaged,” he said.