The rosy picture painted by Ministers notwithstanding, lack of ‘mother industries’ and the prohibitive cost of land are being proven to be major constraints for industrial development in Krishna district. Despite being touted as the ideal destination for industrial development, Vijayawada, the State’s second largest city, appears to be struggling to catch the fancy of investors.
Making the matter worse, the development of Machilipatnam port has been sluggish in spite of the importance that appears to be attached to it. The district has no big manufacturing industry worth mentioning as the grand vision of successive governments for this region has never translated into reality. “An impressive number of Industrial Entrepreneurs’ Memoranda (IEM) is filed but only a few proposals acquire tangible shape due to difficulty in fulfilling the needs of Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, an official of the District Industries Department told The Hindu .
Catch-22 situationThe establishment of several mega industries including a cement-clinker unit at Mukteswarapuram near Jaggaiahpet with a capacity of two lakh tonnes per annum, a fertilizer unit with an outlay of Rs. 1,500 crore near Vedadri in the same mandal, a 1,320-MW thermal power plant at Gudimetla village near Nandigama and a combined cycle gas-based power plant at Ramannagudem near Nuzvid still have many hurdles to be cleared for commencing production. And tops the bill is the slew of approvals to be secured from a host of departments, the official explained.
The fertilizer plant proposed at Vedadri is in advanced stages of land acquisition and will be soon coming for public hearing and if everything goes well, it will be the biggest manufacturing industry in the district . Similarly, Narla Tatarao Thermal Power Station at Ibrahimpatnam is the largest industrial unit in the district, but in the non-core manufacturing sector.
Against this backdrop, the District Industries Promotion Committee is meeting under the chairmanship of Collector M. Raghunandan Rao on July 19 to sort out the said bottlenecks. The development of industrial park at Jaggaiahpet is an important item on the agenda.
