Singapore consortium to design Andhra Pradesh’s new capital city

A Singapore consortium comprising Surbana International Consultants and Jurong International has been appointed master planners to develop Indian state Andhra Pradesh's new capital city to be built near Vijayawada.

The decision was announced today by the state's chief minister Chandrababu Naidu and Singapore's second minister for trade and industry S Iswaran at a media conference yesterday in Hyderabad.

''Both Surbana and Jurong International began as government planning units and have proven track records in developing cities, townships and industrial parks in Singapore, India and around the world,'' Iswaran said.

"The companies are privileged to be appointed as master planners, and will bring their expertise and experience to work with Andhra Pradesh officials on developing a world-class capital city," he added.

The former state of Andhra Pradesh was bifurcated into Andhra Pradesh and Telangana on 2 June 2014 following years of public demand and protests (See: Telangana is born, KCR is first chief minister of India's 29th state).

Currently, the capital Hyderabad, which falls geographically within Telangana, is shared by both the states as the capital, an arrangement that will continue up to 2024 when Hyderabad will become the sole capital of Telangana.

A memorandum of understanding was signed in December between the Andhra Pradesh state government and Singapore to draw up the master plan for the new capital city.

The modern capital city will be built in the Vijayawada-Guntur region and according to the consortium, over 7,000 sq.km of area will be used for the development of the new capital which has to be completed in 10 years.  The consortium has to finalise the master plan in six months.

Initially, the consortium which has a track record of more than 20 completed projects in India, will work towards producing a land use master plan covering commercial, residential, transportation and infrastructure aspects of the proposed city, ten times in size compared to Singapore.

The big challenge would be how to adapt Singapore's experiences to the context of Andhra Pradesh, which is of course culturally, socially, economically very different from Singapore.

Teo Eng Cheong, chief executive officer of International Enterprise Singapore, the statutory body which facilitates growth of Singapore's companies abroad, said: "As the new capital region develops, we envisage opportunities for more Singapore companies to participate in Andhra Pradesh's growth, particularly in the urban solutions, ICT and industrial infrastructure sectors."

Over the weekend, Iswaran, who is also a minister in the prime minister's office, had met the Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to discuss opportunities in other areas of cooperation including urban solutions, energy and manufacturing.