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Investing in people would be a key component of Odisha’s investment-promotion strategy. This would be aimed at assuring investors of the abundant human resource in the state, said Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the Business Standard Odisha Round Table 2016 on Wednesday.
“The most important component of our investment-promotion strategy… is to invest in people. We seek to create a niche in the skill ecosystem of the country so that availability of ‘Skilled-in Odisha’ becomes a parameter of quality for investors,” Patnaik said.
Instead of focusing solely on attracting investments, the state government is attaching more importance on implementation of investment intentions.
Odisha drew in total investment intent of about Rs 2.03 lakh crore across 10 diversified sectors during the three-day extravaganza, Make in Odisha (November 30 to December 2), touted as the largest-ever investors’ meet organised in its history.
“I am particularly pleased that the proposed investments have the potential to generate 140,000 additional jobs. The state government will do all it can to ensure the grounding of these investments,” the chief minister said.
“The launching of nine new industrial infrastructure projects and industrial units over the past three weeks, including three projects of the Aditya Birla Group, Shahi Exports and ITC, is a testimony of our focus on results”, he added.
Odisha is fast emerging as the manufacturing hub of the east. To catapult the state to a high growth trajectory, the state government has formulated the Odisha Industrial Development Plan (Vision-2025), which identifies a number of focus sectors in manufacturing and envisages creation of three million new employment opportunities.
These identified sectors are agro and food processing, chemicals and petrochemicals, textiles and apparel, downstream and ancillary sectors, electronic system design and manufacturing and information technology-enabled services.
“We have also put in place a number of sector-specific policies to provide best-in-class incentives and create an industry-friendly ecosystem for prospective investors,” Patnaik said.
By leveraging technology, the state government has taken several new initiatives over the last one year to reduce the physical interface in governance.
“We became the first state in the country to integrate industrial approvals with the e-BiZ platform. The state’s central inspection framework for industries has been recognized as one of the best practices by the Government of India and the World Bank,” Patnaik said.
Apart from investor friendly policies, the state is also focusing on creating world class infrastructure facilities.
The state government has increased the outlay and expenditure on physical infrastructure more than three times over a period of four years in creation of irrigation facility, road and rail connectivity, power generation, transmission and distribution.
For providing congenial atmosphere to the investors, the state government is also developing large scale investment regions in the form of National Investment & Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ) at Kalinga Nagar, a Petroleum, Chemicals and Petrochemicals Investment Region (PCPIR) at Paradip and a port-based manufacturing zone at Dhamra.
Apart from the large scale investment regions, sector-specific industrial clusters are also coming up in the state.
The Odisha government is also accelerating public investment in social sector for providing education, affordable healthcare facility, skills, housing, drinking water, electricity and other basic needs.
The social sector investment by the state will strengthen the capacity of our people to participate in the process of economic development for rapid transformation of our state, Patnaik added.
