Ernakulam district finds a prominent place in the draft industrial policy for the State being discussed now in various forums. From doubling of the capacity of Travancore-Cochin Chemicals to an electronics manufacturing cluster in Kakkanad, the industrial policy is a roadmap for the manufacturing sector development.
Besides the mega project like a petrochemicals complex in Kochi, the draft policy proposes an electronics hardware park at Amballoor and an electronics incubator at Infopark in Kochi.
The draft says that the industrial development of the State has been guided by the policies in 2007 and 2015 and that the present circumstances call for a “new approach”.
The draft also points out the State government’s anxiety about privatisation moves by the Union government. The privatisation move has created a sense of “panic” among the employees. The privatisation of industrial units like Fertilizers and Chemicals Travancore is already under way. When the government decided to privatise Instrumentation Limited, the State government stepped in to in principle approval for the takeover of the unit by the State. The procedures are on. Twenty-five per cent of the shares in Cochin Shipyard Limited, a project that was launched in the second Five Year Plan for the whole of South India, is being sold by the government.
The draft also says that the possible closure of the Kochi unit of Hindustan Organic Chemicals can cause problems to State-owned units like the Bamboo Corporation as the HOCL unit supplies materials like phenol. The abolition of import duty has plunged units like HIL and HNL into serious problem. The Central PSUs were facing problems because of the privatisation policy whereas the State will “take strong steps to retain and protect the Central PSUs,” says the draft policy.
The LDF government has taken steps to protect State PSUs and has turned around 13 units which were making losses.
