The Hindu       21.07.2016 

Germany ready to fund projects in Coimbatore

Germany is ready to fund development projects in Coimbatore, said the country’s Ambassador Martin Ney on Wednesday.

Addressing
reporters after meeting Mayor P. Rajkumar and Corporation Commissioner
K. Vijayakarthikeyan here, Mr. Ney said that said if the Corporation
forwarded proposals for the projects it planned to start this October,
Germany would be willing to consider extending financial support.

The
Corporation could, therefore, approach the Central Government so that
it was brought on table during the inter-government negotiations.

The
Ambassador, who led a 10-member delegation, said that he had met Chief
Minister Jayalalithaa. And he was in Coimbatore, one of the three Smart
Cities that Germany was collaborating with. The other two were
Bhubaneswar and Kochi.

Mr. Ney said that Germany and
Tamil Nadu had strong links as in the past seven years his country had
granted three loans worth Euro 265 mn to fund 30 urban development
projects. Of those, a few had been implemented in Coimbatore as well.

Germany had also given Euro 76 million to the Tamil Nadu Transmission Corporation under green energy cooperation.

As
for helping Coimbatore in the Smart Cities project, he said that
Germany had expertise in smart and intelligent transport and waste water
management. The German expertise went back to 1972 when the country was
preparing for the Munich Olympics. It took the transport underground
and cleaned its rivers, including Rhine. During his interaction with Mr.
Karthikeyan, there was a mention of developing smart and intelligent
transport in the city. German companies had also developed technical
expertise in those areas.

Members of the Germany
Embassy in New Delhi, funding agency KfW, Bosch, German Water
Partnership, Siemens, TUV SUD South Asia and Fraunhofer Office, India,
were also present.