Rs 1,000 crore for cluster development in Haryana

Industry body PHD Chamber today asked 14th Finance Commission to infuse a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore to develop critical infrastructure in Haryana, including latest technology for cluster development.

"An intensive cluster development programme, which aims to develop latest technology and management, is the need of the hour. Only such programmes can give the much needed boost to the industry in Haryana," Pranav Gupta, Managing Committee Member, PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said in a statement.

He raised this matter during a meeting between the representatives of trade and industry and the members of 14th Finance Commission here.

The Commission comprises Chairman Y V Reddy and members including Abhijit Sen, Sushma Nath, M Govinda Rao and Sudipto Mundle.

The Commission is to make recommendations on various aspects of Centre-State Financial relations, besides making recommendations on the sharing of Union taxes, principles governing Grants-in-aid to states and transfer of resources to local bodies.

Gupta said, "Haryana has the advantage of having the largest number of natural industrial clusters. Common Facility Centres including design centres, raw material banks, rooms, dry ports, quality making centres, heat treatment centres should be created for each such cluster."

These Common Facility Centres, thus developed, would provide a level playing field to the participating units, said Gupta, adding, "but such approach needs creation of innovative manufacturing ecosystems for manufacturing excellence by infusing innovation in its manufacturing sector."

Citing an example, Gupta said, the pharma cluster which consists of around 65 units in Karnal was badly suffering because of tax incentives given to units at Baddi in Himachal.

"Providing testing facilities to Pharma units will enable them to adhere to good laboratory practices and also improve their order books. It is estimated that their profit margins will improve by at least 12 per cent," he said.

He further said that Ambala Scientific Instruments Cluster, for that matter, if provided with a design studio, tool room facility, testing labs, would bring an improvement of 40 per cent in competitiveness.

Gupta said, "The proposed Mass Rapid Transit Systems and the Regional Rapid Transit systems need to be taken on priority for faster transit leading to time and cost effectiveness. The work on the proposed Delhi-Sonipat-Panipat corridor, Delhi-Gurgaon-Alwar corridor and the Delhi-Ghaziabad-Alwar corridors needs to be expedited."