Odisha will shortly submit the detailed project report (DPR) on setting up of an industry cluster under the National Investment and Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ) scheme of the Centre.
The DPR will be prepared by the state’s nodal agency for land acquisition - Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Odisha (Idco). NIMZ needed 5,000 hectares (or 12,355.26 acres) of contiguous land and has been identified as one of the key instruments of Centre’s National Manufacturing Policy.
“We have identified Kalinganagar in Jajpur district as one of the potential locations where we have availability of more than 5,000 hectares of land. The state government is also considering other locations like Paradip, Jharsuguda and the Angul-Dhenkanal region as other possible locations for developing NIMZ. We will shortly be sending the DPR to the Centre,” a highly placed government source told Business Standard.
The state government had earlier insisted on scaling down land requirement for NIMZs, citing that acquisition of 5,000 hectares of contiguous land was not a workable proposition.
The government’s readiness follows a missive by Union minister for industries and commerce Anand Sharma to state chief minister Naveen Patnaik in July this year. Sharma had urged the Odisha government to identify suitable land with appropriate power, road and transport linkages for establishment of a NIMZ. “While these zones are an important instrumentality, forward looking provisions of the policy are applicable across the country wherever industry is able to organise itself into clusters and adopt a model of self-regulation. I am sure that you will recognize the intrinsic merit of this policy which holds enormous promise for industrial development and employment generation,” Sharma had written to the Odisha chief minister.
The NIMZs are proposed to be self-governing and autonomous bodies under Article 243 (Q-c) of the constitution and managed by a special purpose vehicle headed by government officials.
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The Centre will provide financial support for trunk infrastructure while internal infrastructure will be developed on a PPP (public private partnership) mode for which access to viability gap funding would be provided.
The first seven NIMZs have been notified and they will be set up in the states of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Haryana, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh along the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor. Together, these six states account for 43 per cent of the country’s GDP (gross domestic product), 50 per of industrial production and exports and 40 per cent of total workforce.