Substantial infrastructure support is to be provided by the Karnataka government to less industrially developed areas as part of a plan to decongest Bangalore.
This was announced in the new industrial policy (2014-19), which Chief Minister Siddaramaiah launched on Friday. Towards promoting areas, beyond Bangalore, “it is proposed to notify potential areas as Special Investment Regions (SIRs) to provide substantial infrastructure support.” Dharwad, Gadgag, Haveri and Belgaum districts is to be notified as one such SIR area.
The Hyderabad Karnataka region will get additional incentives and concessions. In addition, the State government “will prevail upon the Centre to offer incentives” such as excise duty and income tax exemption to the backward region, something similar to what is being given to Andhra Pradesh. The region “needs special focus with funds for development,” the policy said.
Towards simplification of regulatory procedures, the policy said a comprehensive study of such procedures will be conducted by the State government. This intent is to reduce time and cost of compliance to government procedures for industrial investments. Also, it is proposed to abolish trade licence to all industries.
The policy, which has proposed various measures, seeks to attract Rs.5 lakh crore investment and help create 15 lakh jobs by 2019. One of the objectives is to enhance the contribution of manufacturing sector to the State GDP from the existing 16.87 per cent to 20 per cent.
On the achievements during the previous policy period (2009-14), the document said the targeted investment was Rs.3 lakh crore and employment generation for about 10 lakh people.
A total of 1,450 project proposals with an estimated investment of Rs.7.13 lakh crore were approved. The employment potential of these projects was about 26.84 lakh jobs. Of this, 169 proposals were implemented on which the investment was about Rs.1.08 lakh crore. The jobs created by these projects were 1.47 lakh. Over 850 proposals, with investments of around Rs.3.21 lakh crore, are under various stages of implementation.
