With the financial woes of Posco and Vedanta Alumina denting its image among both local and foreign investors as well as the industry, Odisha is now focusing on non-mineral sectors to woo investment of Rs.1,73,000 crore by 2019.
The State’s Industry Secretary Sanjeev Chopra on Tuesday visited Mumbai to hard sell the State as an ideal investment destination to the industry community here with a promise of ease of doing business and grant of financial incentives to revive the deteriorating investment climate in the eastern State.
“Growth of mineral based manufacturing will take its own time but there is no problem in the non-mineral sectors. Several factories those were set up are up and running without any problem. So we have now decided to focus on the non-mineral based industry to achieve our goal,” Mr. Chopra told The Hindu.
He was in Mumbai to interact with captains of Indian industry to get their feedback as well as to address their concerns.
“Agriculture has limited potential to add to our Gross State Domestic Product (GDP). So, development has to come from the manufacturing sector. We have set a target to attract investment of Rs.1,73,000 crore in the next four years to provide employment to 3.3 lakh people. It is a tall order but achievable,” Mr. Chopra said.
Out of ten odd non-mineral sectors such as electronics manufacturing, IT & ITeS, plastics, chemicals and petrochemicals, technical textile, tourism, food processing including seafood processing and ship building, the State will focus on five sectors which will be given impetus.
Management consulting firm KPMG has been hired to assist the state government to identify those five sectors which could be scaled up based on their long term growth potentials. Each of these five will have three sub-sectors, which will be encouraged to come up in the state. KPMG is expected to submit its report by December this year.
Besides, the State is coming out with a new industrial policy shortly which will make it attractive for the industry to set up base in Odisha.
Alarm bells are ringing in the state as flow of investment has been dwindling since the mining and metals sectors have run into trouble due to ban on mining.
The State is also looking at developing downstream industry in the steel and aluminium sectors. This is expected to give a boost to small and medium scale enterprises.
While port based industrialisation has been planned at Dhamra, electronics manufacturing will be given a leg up at Khurda. Other regions which have industry clusters include Paradip and Kalinganagar. Food parks will be encouraged at Rayagada.
To provide land to companies those would be interested to set up factories, the State has already developed 10,000 acre of land for immediate allotment. Another 65,000 acres have been identified.
Since Odisha is not as business friendly as Gujarat or Maharashtra, the state government believes that the attitude would change eventually as the aspiration level of the people is changing very fast.
