Tamil Nadu Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Tuesday sought the support of the Union government to boost investment and infrastructure development in the State and listed out specific requests to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. Mr. Rajan virtually participated in a video conference meeting convened by Ms. Sitharaman with Chief Ministers and State Finance Ministers to discuss steps to promote investment, infrastructure development and economic growth in the country.
While pointing out that the State government was taking several steps to improve the condition of Power DISCOMs, Mr. Rajan requested the Union government to ensure adequate and continuous supply of coal and to help in the development of and access to supplies of Chandrabila Coal Block in Odisha, an official release said. The Minister also highlighted the wind energy potential in Tamil Nadu and urged the Union government to formulate a viable offshore wind development policy to further give an impetus to renewable energy development.
The Minister urged the Union government to come out with a comprehensive revival package for MSMEs, which have been adversely affected by the pandemic. He also requested the upgradation of the entire length of Chennai-Kanniyakumari to eight lanes in order to reduce logistic costs for the industries and urged the government to speed up 11 pending NHAI highway projects.
While seeking cooperation to resolve the bottlenecks faced in the expansion of four major airports -- Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchi and Thoothukudi, Mr. Rajan said that in context of Madurai airport, the land acquisition and transfer to Airports Authority of India have been completed and urged the government to declare it as an international airport soon to facilitate more trade and flights to the region.
Pointing out that Thoothukudi VOC port was of “strategic importance” to the nation and has a great potential to be a trans-shipment hub, he emphasized that the master plan for expansion of Thoothukudi port with outer harbour project may be taken up in earnest soon. The Minister requested the Union government to formulate a data sharing protocol that allows the States access to data like income Tax, Aadhaar, COVID-19, among others, which would supplement efforts of States towards a data-driven administration.
“The Minister recommended that States may be permitted to borrow unconditionally within the prescribed limits and such limits should be decided based on the capacity of the State to absorb higher investments. On similar lines, the restriction of one project per annum per State from a given external agency should be discontinued to allow market mechanism to function freely. These measures would benefit the state of Tamil Nadu which is considered an attractive investment destination,” it said.
Mr. Rajan stated that the recent reduction in prices of petrol and diesel by the Union government has “provided a golden opportunity to conduct a case study to analyse the impact of price on elasticity of demand and supply, and on growth in general.” The Minister also appreciated the National Single Window Portal (Maadhyam) by the government of India for obtaining GOI-related clearances from various departments and further recommended that aftercare services and grievance redressal mechanism be included in the platform.
“He suggested that the timeline for clearance under Central legislations may be reduced from the present four months to one month and import permits for medical devices and insecticides may be expedited,” it said. In his concluding remarks, the Mr. Rajan assured of the State’s commitment to work in close coordination with the Union government.
