The government’s flagship project, SmartCity, will not have a stall at the Emerging Kerala venue at Le Meridien hotel here, after the former found the space allotted to it “too small.”
According to SmartCity sources, they took a decision not to occupy the small stall allotted to them as it would only send wrong signals to potential investors.
“When an investors’ meet of this scale is taking place in Kochi, the authorities should have given prime of place to a city-based project like SmartCity,” a source said.
But he added that all top SmartCity officials including chief executive officer of the Tecom Investment Group, Abdullatif Al Mulla and SmartCity managing director Baju George would attend the meet, apart from other officials.
Meanwhile, a spokesman of the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation, the nodal agency for the investors’ meet, said as it had to accommodate others also, giving a bigger space to SmartCity was not possible. “There will only be 32 stalls”, he said.