KOCHI: Despite spending huge sums of money for various marketing events, the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation Ltd (KSIDC), which runs seven industrial parks in the state, is finding no takers for large tracts in these parks with Coconut Industrial Park, Kuttiyadi, inviting the dubious distinction of not able to allot even an inch of land to companies, even nearly 12 years after the park was established.
As per the information accessed via RTI, KSIDC has spent a total of Rs 27.90 crore from 2011 to 2016 and another Rs 8.03 crore from May 2016 to September 2019 for conducting events such as Emerging Kerala, WE Mission, Ease of Doing Business and other exhibitions and trade fairs to attract entrepreneurs to set up business in Kerala.
For instance, KSIDC owns 115 acres in Coconut Industrial Park, but the entire land is lying vacant. Similarly, out of the 34.05 acres at KSIDC Investment Zone, Palakkad, 21.34 acres (62.67 per cent) are not occupied.
Replying to the RTI petition of activist K Govindan Nampoothiry, KSIDC said 55.87 per cent of its Industrial Growth Centre (IGC) at Kinalur, Kozhikode, has been lying vacant. The Kinalur park has a total land area of 310.71 acres of which 173.59 acres have no takers. Another industrial park where a large area is still not occupied is IGC Valiyavelicham, Kannur. Out of the total area of 250 acres, a total of 128.03 acres or 51.21 per cent are unoccupied, said KSIDC, in the RTI reply.
“This shows that though KSIDC is spending huge amounts of money for holding various marketing events, it’s not effective. Even if some entrepreneurs show interest, they are being forced to go through various departments and other unnecessary hurdles,” said Nampoothiri. “KSIDC, in fact, held one big event exclusively for coconut promotion,” he said, adding that the plight of the Coconut Park showed the event was an utter failure. “What we need is effective and direct marketing.”
Three parks, which fare better, are KSIDC’s IGC at Cherthala, the Business Park at Angamaly and the Phase-I of the Life Science Park. Only 13.20 per cent or 36.80 acres out of 278 acres of IGC Cherthala are unoccupied while only 14.29 per cent (8 acres out of 56 acres) of the Business Park, Angamaly, are lying vacant. As regards the Life Science Park, KSIDC said only 15.50 acres remain as 57.25 acres out of the 69.67 acres of the park have been allocated.KSIDC also shared the total funds provided to various industries as loans. Multi-layer packaging film manufacturing unit received the biggest assistance of Rs 11.85 crore, followed by glass manufacturing (Rs 7.25 crore), steel melting unit (Rs 3.74 crore), broadcasting (Rs 3.63 crore), acrylic products manufacturing (Rs 2.90 crore) and oil (Rs 65.27 lakh).