With their dreams being shattered and performance targets going haywire in the aftermath of cyclone Hudhud, the industrial units and investors are eagerly looking at tax sops and other incentives to get back to normal mode.
Though most of them are on revival path, their demand for a package from the Centre is gaining momentum. Going by the magnitude of the loss suffered by the industries, big and small, tax sops will become the best therapy to instil confidence in them.
“We expect package pending before the Centre post-bifurcation cleared soon with a lot of encouragement for augmenting the existing infrastructure and rescheduling loan, particularly payment of interest immediately for all the industries with focus on MSME, who are badly hit,” CII Vizag zone vice-chairman Neeraj Sarda has told The Hindu .
The investors’ community is also clamouring for a slew of incentives. They say most of the MSME units, promoters of warehouses, poultry firms and IT and ITES units are in deep trouble as they have no insurance coverage.
Poultry sector loss alone is put at Rs.500 crore. Pharma units, which are heavily concentrated at JNPC, Parawada, estimated their loss at Rs.500 crore. Hindustan Shipyard Ltd and Heavy Plate and Vessels Plant have suffered huge loss. Visakhapatnam Steel Plant is incurring a production loss of Rs.40 crore to Rs.50 crore a day.
Heavy damageVisakhapatnam and Gangavaram ports will take months to achieve normalcy due to heavy damage to their facilities. Officially, the preliminary loss of Visakhapatnam Port is put at Rs.232 crore. Stevedores, who maintain port godowns, say their loss itself will be more than Rs.100 crore.
“Our sheds are blown away in the cyclonic winds. With roofless and heavy loan burden and no adequate insurance cover, we don’t know what to do,” says Ramakrishna Narappareddy, founder-president of Visakha Autonagar Small-Scale Industrialists’ Welfare Association.
A meeting of State Level Bankers’ Committee is scheduled to be held here in a fortnight. “We will abide by whatever decision is taken,” Syndicate Bank Executive Director M. Anjaneya Prasad has said.
