BHUBANESWAR: With inordinate delays in grounding of big ticket projects denting the image of Odisha as an investment destination, the State Government on Thursday decided to create land banks for industrial development.
A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting presided over by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik at the Secretariat here where he reviewed the activities of Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (IDCO).
IDCO has identified more than two lakh acres of compact patches of land suitable for industrial development, Industries Minister Debi Prasad Mishra told mediapersons. The land has been identified, in 10 districts, Jagatsinghpur (Paradip), Bhadrak (Dhamra), Cuttack, Khurda, Dhenkanal, Angul, Sundargarh (Rourkela), Jharsuguda, Jajpur (Kalinga Nagar) and Balasore.
The Minister said the Government will keep land ready for setting up industries and investors would not have to wait for land acquisition, they would be offered land as soon as they come forward for investment.
Earlier, IDCO had asked the district Collectors to identify unobjectionable and unsurveyed Government land, degraded waste land in contiguous patches for creation of land bank. As several big projects, including Posco, could not be launched because of delay in land acquisition and local resistance, the State Government hopes creation of land bank will solve the problem to some extent.
In a bid to make IDCO more professional in its functioning, the Chief Minister asked it to split target dates for completion of sector specific industrial parks into milestones. Chief Secretary GC Pati has been asked to review achievement of the milestones every month.
The Chief Minister has asked IDCO to take CSR activities more seriously and expedite projects like crafts museum, Mission Shakti building and Krishi Bhavan.
Mishra said IDCO has created Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) for various industrial parks such as steel downstream at Kalinga Nagar, Aluminium Park at Angul, Plastic Park and petroleum, chemicals and petro-chemical investment regime (PCPIR) at Paradip and Electronics Park and SEZ Park in Bhubaneswar.
The agency has set deadlines for completion of several projects like Angul Aluminium Park by December, 2016, Paradip Plastic Park by July, 2016, Bhubaneswar Seafood Park by December, 2016 and Electronics Park by 2017.
Besides these, the IDCO has also taken up two SEZ projects - Infocity and Infovalley - at Bhubaneswar and four PPP projects in different districts, the Minister said.
Mishra said the agency has taken up development work of three investment regions like PCPIR - Paradip, National Investment Manufacturing Zone - Kalinga Nagar and Special Investment Region - Dhamra.