On Thursday, Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam (GNN) declared about successfully raising and listing India’s first Green Municipal bond issue. GNN raised ₹150 crores for 8.1%. The raised money will be used for cleaning up polluted water by installing a tertiary water treatment plant and supplying piped water by water meters to places like Sahibabad.

Mahender Singh Tawar, Municipal Commissioner, GNN, in a conference mentioned getting ₹401 crores worth subscription from 40 investors for the Ghaziabad Green Municipal Bond indicating the interest in the bond issue, adding that it is one of the most competitive rates by which a city has raised funds. Ghaziabad has secured a revenue surplus position in the last few years and is debt-free according to India Ratings. Ashish Chauhan, MD, and CEO, BSE, stated that this listing will develop the green bond market for urban local bodies. He added that the BSE can now be used by urban local bodies as a platform to raise funds.  Foreign Infrastructure Investors are also looking at this platform which shows the transparency of Urban Local Bodies. Varun Kaushik, Director, AK Capital, which was the lead manager for the issue, notified that in the following year, bonds from Kanpur, Agra, and Varanasi can also be expected. Apart from that they also had the mandate to raise ₹200 crores through bonds for Lucknow and pointed out that the bond issue was subscribed four times.

Durga Shankar Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs told that apart from Ghaziabad, nine cities had earlier raised municipal bonds, these cities are Ahmedabad, Surat, Visakhapatnam, Amravati, Indore, Bhopal, Pune, Hyderabad, and Lucknow. Relating to Ghaziabad’s water treatment plant, Mishra told that Chennai possesses such a tertiary water treatment plant where the input is sewage water and the output is drinking water. He further added that he drank the treated water from the plant in Chennai, and it is better than branded drinking water which is sold in the market.