Mumbai, Feb 6 (IANS): The Maharashtra government on Wednesday appointed a nine member Project Management Unit (PMU) headed by the additional chief secretary of housing department for the implementation of the NITI Aayog's report on making the bursting Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) a growth hub with a $300 billion economy by 20230 from the present level of $140 billion.

The PMU includes additional chief secretaries of transport, planning and urban development departments, Mumbai Metropolitan Commissioner or additional commissioner as member secretary, chief executive officer of Slum Rehabilitation Authority, Mumbai Port Trust chairman or its representative, Konkan Divisional Commissioner and the representative of Institute for Sustainability, Employment and Growth.

According to the government resolution released by the planning department joint secretary Charushila Chaudhari the PMU’s mandate includes implementation of the NITI Aayog’s recommendations, provide assistance to Growth Hub Regulatory Board and Growth Hub Coordination Committee and suggest remedies to Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority to address various problems.

The government resolution on the formation of PMU coincided with the meeting between the NITI Aayog CEO BVR Subrahmanyam and the Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis held on Wednesday in Mumbai.

The state government has already appointed a Chief Secretary led high level committee for the implementation of the NITI Aayog’s report on making the MMR) a growth hub.

NITI Aayog in its report presented to the state government last year has made a slew of recommendations including promotion of MMR as global services hub, affordable housing and slum rehabilitation, tourism, port-proximate integrated manufacturing and logistics hub, planned urbanisation and intensive transport oriented development, sustainability projects and world class urban infrastructure and transport.

NITI Aayog has suggested the state can promote two themed tourism development hubs at Gorai and Madh and Alibag and implement a master plan for a 300 km coastline.

Further, MMR can promote port proximate integrated manufacturing and logistic hub with the development of Kharbav integrated logistic cluster as a multi modal logistic park, circular economy parks and electronic manufacturing and manufacturing cluster for white goods assembly at Khalapur-Panvel section. In the wake of development of Rs 76,000 crore Vadhavan port, NITI Aayog has suggested that it can be exploited for the promotion of green hydrogen, steel, chemicals, integrated textile and apparels.