NEW DELHI: After 20 smart industrial townships under construction, the government is now looking to facilitate setting up of more industrial parks in smaller towns and cities, a senior official said Thursday.
“We are hopeful that the framework for them (industrial parks) will be ready within this fiscal year,” secretary in the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade Amardeep Singh Bhatia said at the annual general meeting of FICCI.
The industrial parks in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities will take care of the land requirements of the industry at reasonable costs and provide facilities which will be akin to plug-and-play facilities.
“Consultations with the industry have been held on these parks,” he said without mentioning more details.
In India, Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities are classified by population, with Tier 2 cities having a population of 50,000 to 100,000 and Tier 3 cities having a population of 20,000 to 50,000.
Bhatia said that the work of the 20 new smart industrial cities have already started.
Of the 20, 12 got approval from the cabinet in August. Out of the 20 smart cities four are functional and four that are under construction. The cities are coming along industrial corridors 11 of which have already been notified and their prospective plans prepared.
The 12 smart industrial cities will come over an area of 26,000 acres and cost the government Rs 28,602 crore.
The official said the government is also working to reduce compliances that businesses have to undertake beyond the big cities and take that reform process to the district level where smaller companies interact on a more regular basis.
Under the Business Reform Action Plan that is functional since 2020 states identified 50,000 compliance that the industry has to adhere to and out of which 42,000 have been either done away with or eased by changing the procedures or digitising them. “We want to deepen this process for which we have already started working in a framework where differences among states on procedures can be simplified,” DPIIT secretary said. He said efforts are also on to see that the best practices within states are replicated.
He said that the department is in the forefront of fine tuning the foreign direct investment policy along with other ministries as a result of which more than 90% of the foreign investment comes through the automatic route.
“FDI does not come alone but comes with technology as well as linkages to global value chains and access to markets. Business should take advantage of this relaxed FDI policy.”
Bhatia said the start-up initiatives of the government are also progressing well. The country now has 1.53 lakh registered start-ups. “We have a good funding scheme which has been put in place. Around Rs 10,000 core financing facility has been extended to more than 1000 start-ups. Similar facilities have also been extended to incubators. We are also pushing forDeep Tech start-ups to be facilitated by booking at their long-term funding needs.”
Source: The Financial Express
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