MIHANS PROGRESS IS ON ITS PEAK !

Though investors may be going slow, Maharashtra Airport Development Company building city’s ambitious Mihan seems to be going full speed ahead with developing infrastructure there.
MADC is in the process of finalising a deal with Europe’s biggest hotel chain— Accor—for setting up three and four star hotels within the SEZ.
Besides 50 other companies in the process of investing in Mihan, Accor is negotiating a land deal with Mihan to set up the hotels.

Mihan flying high despite downturn

“Besides having 50 companies already in the process of investing in Multimodal International Hub Airport at Nagpur (Mihan), we are negotiating a land deal with Accor for hotels. We have already awarded a contract for setting up 2500-bed hospital to Johns Hopkins, a globally-acclaimed health services provider from US,” revealed Abdul Abid Ruhi, project manager, MADC.
The reason, as Ruhi puts it, the cost of the land in SEZs in Nagpur, considered the tenth economically fastest growing urban centre of India, is half that in metro cities like Mumbai. “In the financial meltdown, tier-two cities like Nagpur will thus be benefited as compared to the metro cities like Mumbai,” he added.
Sources said Mantri Realty, building a private SEZ close to Mihan, is also separately negotiating deals with Biocon, another reputed name in biotech and pharma, and Satyam, a well-known software institution. Shrikant Laddha and Rupesh Mowade, President and project manager for Mantri Realty’s private SEZ, said though they were going slow in construction due to economic slowdown, top banners like Biocon and Satyam were negotiating with the company for setting up their units. Besides, there have been 20 fresh inquiries for buying land. Mantri’s Rs 600 crore SEZ is coming up with its first phase of Rs 100 crore with five iconic buildings over 44 acres.
According to Ruhi, as of now there were no indications of putting on hold the construction plans by major investors. “Satyam will start construction by February next year while SICAL Logistics will begin work on its project from January 2009. Developments by L&T are also expected soon,” reveals Ruhi and his Chief Engineer colleague S V Chahande.
He said that the quota of land reserved for IT companies in Mihan was almost over. “But recently four inquiries for buying land in non-IT sector were made by companies in Kolkata and Mumbai,” Ruhi, who looked elated after answering frequent calls from Mumbai and Kolkata, said.
MADC superintending engineer S K Chatterjee said companies like DLF, Shapoorji Pallonji Info City, TAL Manufacturing Solutions Ltd (which makes parts for Boeing’s Dreamliner) and Caliber Point have maintained their pace of developments.