In a renewed effort to pitch itself as the ideal destination for India Inc and new generation of entrepreneurs, the Odisha Government will unveil a mobile app that will help prospective investors get information on policies, subsidies, incentives, and also help track their files through several ministries.
Ease of business
The Shri.Naveen Patnaik-led government will also launch a new platform, developed by IT giant Infosys, that aims to ease the business environment for companies looking to invest in the resource-rich State.
As a first step in the direction, the State Cabinet cleared the Odisha Industries Facilitation (Amendment) Rules, 2015 in the first week of August. Under the Act, a new facilitation cell has been constituted that will have specified formats to assess an investment proposal and clear it within a stipulated period.
Single-window clearance
The Cabinet had also passed the Industrial Policy Resolution (IPR) 2015. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik will, in the first week of September, make a formal announcement on the initiatives, which include the creation of a land bank of four lakh acres.
“Though Odisha was the second State to introduce the concept of single-window clearance for investment proposals, the system has deficiencies. A perception has gained ground that Odisha is not giving the desired push. The government realises that industries are needed to generate employment,” Sanjeev Chopra, Principal Secretary, Industries, told BusinessLine.
Arresting a decline
The State had seen a decline of 55 per cent in investment proposals in five years from 2004.
And the share of the manufacturing sector in its GDP had fallen from 11.08 per cent in 2012-13 to 9.61 per cent in 2014-15. Now it hopes to reverse the trend with the new steps.
The facilitation cell will approve ‘green’ projects, those belonging to the agriculture sector, in 15 days.
In case of other projects, the proposals will be cleared within 30 days. If not cleared, the projects will be deemed approved.
The cell will be established at the State and district levels and will include members of the government, regulatory bodies and the industry.
To further speed up investment proposals, the State plans to set up an Industrial Infrastructure Development Fund with an initial corpus of ₹100 crore.
These will be used to bridge the gap in funding of specific infrastructure projects needed to facilitate large industrial projects, said Chopra.
Investors’ summit
The government, which has mandated JWT for a re-branding exercise at it prepares for an investors summit in February, has earmarked 10,000 acres for projects from the total land bank of four lakh acres.
All of them are government-owned and include waste lands, added Chopra.
Prasanta Patnaik