Union Commerce Minister Anand Sharma on Monday announced in-principle clearance for a 5,000-hectare National Investment and Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ) each in Bidar and Gulbarga. The first one at Tumkur has already been approved.
Karnataka may have a fourth NIMZ and the details of the three new ones are being finalised, Mr. Sharma said after reviewing major industry and export promotion proposals from the State here.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah, Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee and senior bureaucrats from the Commerce Ministry and the State Commerce and Industries Department were present at the hour long meeting which followed discussions he had with the Chief Minister in Delhi earlier this month.
The proposed 38-sq km IT Investment Region near Bangalore would be given the status of a NIMZ and will get incentives offered under the National Investment and Manufacturing Policy of 2011.
These will be part of the 14 NIMZs approved across the country, eight of them around the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. “They will be standalone integrated industrial townships. A single-window mechanism will be put in place,” Mr. Sharma said. (While Kolar is also on the NIMZ shortlist, the 12,500-acre Tumkur NIMZ will mainly have component makers for automobile, aerospace and allied sectors.)
Corridor projects The Bangalore-Chennai Industrial Corridor project, to be developed with Japanese government and industry, is to be extended up to Chitradurga. The master plan has almost been completed and the feasibility study of the second phase has been taken up, the Minister said.
The process for a feasibility study has been launched for the other corridor project passing through Bangalore: the 1,000-km Bangalore-Mumbai Economic Corridor, planned with the U.K. industry.
This corridor is expected to draw investments of over $ 25 billion and 25 lakh new jobs, he said.
The Centre is to finance the basic infrastructure for the industrial townships that will come up along the corridor. A joint steering committee will be set up to monitor the progress of the project.
Mr. Sharma was also at a Confederation of Indian Industry interaction where various industry associations based in Bangalore gave in their proposals to improve economic growth. The Indian Machine Tool Manufacturers’ Association, the Karnataka Small-Scale Industries’ Association, the Electronics City Industries’ Association, the Southern India Mills’ Association, and the Society of Indian Aerospace Technologies and Industries, were present at the meeting organised by the CII Karnataka.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Anand Sharma in Bangalore on Monday. Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.