Growth to go beyond Baddi: Himachal CM

The Himachal Pradesh chief minister, Virbhadra Singh, has thanked Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, among others, for extending the excise package for the state, which has already "brought in a proposed investment of over Rs 19,000 crore since early 2003".

"The package will now benefit upcoming industrial areas in the interior parts of the hill state as the peripheral industrial areas of Baddi, Barotiwala and Nalagarh have been saturated by industrial growth," Singh said.

The tax holiday was to expire in March next year, a fact that was causing much anxiety both in the industrial and government sectors here.

Officials here said the decision was taken last week in New Delhi and a fresh notification has been issued by the Centre, delighting many here.

Besides Himachal Pradesh, two other hill states "" Uttaranchal and Sikkim "" have been given this extension by another three years.

Business Standard reported on April 12 that Union Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh, on his visit to Shimla, had, in an exclusive talk with Business Standard, said the United Progressive Alliance government (UPA) was finding a compromise date of March 2010 for extending the excise package to the hill state, and the date would be made public soon.

This, he said, was being done as Punjab and Haryana were opposing further tax holidays because they were allegedly losing investment to these two hitherto industrially-backward hill states.

The decision was expected as all these four states are Congress-ruled, and polls are expected in Uttaranchal by early 2007 and in Himachal by early 2008.

The mood is already upbeat in the Congress circles here as the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) had been lashing out at the Congress for earlier bringing down the date to 2007 from the earlier 2013 decided by the then ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government in 2003.

The PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry has welcomed the extension of the package to Himachal as it would further strengthen the economy of the state.

"Over the last three years, 7,383 industrial investment proposals have been registered and approved with an investment of about Rs 19,280 crore, besides employment for 2,67,875 persons," said a spokesman of the chamber.