 "DMIC to make land available in industrial cities")
The ambitious $100 billion Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project stretching across seven states of 1,483 km is set to start allotting land for industrial purposes in October.
Aimed at creating mega industrial infrastructure and new townships along both sides of the Western Dedicated Rail Freight Corridor, the project is set to take off with land in the process of being identified across four industrial areas.
These are the Integrated Industrial Township (Greater Noida, UP), Dholera Special Investment Region (Gujarat), Shendra Bidkin Industrial Park (Maharashtra) & Dighi Port Industrial Area (Maharashtra).
The nodal agency handling the project — the DMICDC (Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation) has finalized the land use policy. But the land policy determining whether it will be allotted through auction or on a first-come-first served basis, is being currently being worked on.
“While from October onwards land will be available for setting up plants, the rates are being fixed by state level industrial development corporations or other pertinent bodies,” sources in the know said.
To improve ease and efficiency, land allotments will be done online but will be made available by these bodies rather than DMICDC itself, they added. The government had aimed at the single window clearance system to save investors from going to individual states for any permission or clearance.
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Meanwhile, with infrastructure work kicking off in four nodal cities, the fastest development of the project is taking place in Shendra-Bidkin in Aurangabad which has also acquired the largest part of the land — on an area of nearly 10,000 hectares, a government official said.
The expanded JNPT port in Mumbai is expected to come up by end 2019 to serve as the gateway port for the corridor which is when the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor itself reaches completion.
Work is also on in identifying the location of eight smart cities coming up along the corridor.
Together with Japanese IT major NEC Corporation, DMICDC has launched a logistics data services at Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in Navi Mumbai. The logistics data bank (LDB) will handle the tracking and viewing of container movement across all ports to the inland container depots (ICDs) and end-users.
The service is expected to save $ 3.2 billion annually by 2017 by virtue of the lesser inventory carried by the industry.
Currently there are four other proposed industrial corridors apart from DMIC; the Bengaluru- Mumbai Economic Corridor (BMEC); Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor (CBIC); Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor (VCIC) and Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial Corridor (AKIC).
These are on various levels of implementation with most work currently revolving around identifying possible nodes, initiating master planning for them and finalizing land development modules.
While the development of all corridors is loosely monitored by the DMIC, a statutory body named the National Industrial Corridor Authority (NICA) has been proposed by the Commerce and Industry Ministry to ease integrated development and fund management of the five proposed corridors.
Announced by finance minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech in July 2014, the body is to function like the National Highways Authority of India. Plans for NICA were reported to have been shelved early on owing to delay foreseen by the Prime Minister's Office and the cabinet secretariat in getting Parliamentary approval
Later, a Cabinet note was sent to the ministries concerned, seeking comments on a plan to make the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation (DMICDC) the coordinating body for all such projects. A simpler acquiring of Cabinet nod is required for this, as compared to obtaining parliamentary approval for NICA, a commerce ministry official said under conditions of anonymity.
Various trunk infrastructure projects like development of roads, drainage, sewage, potable water, water treatment, sewage treatment plant are being developed under DMICDC.
The project will be implemented in three phases, with the first expected to be completed by 2025 and the second by 2032.