BHUBANESWAR:IN the run-up to the ‘Make in Odisha’ Conclave 2018, the State Government is ramping up efforts to attract big-ticket investment in the State.“We will be reaching out to potential investors in West Bengal and across the country, offering them an opportunity to set up downstream units in these industrial parks,” said Sanjeev Chopra, Principal Secretary (Industries). Chopra, who met Bengal-based companies to attract investments to Odisha on Friday, said there are over 1 lakh acres of land bank available in the State for industrial development. Other strategic advantages include the low cost of doing business in the State, incentives for investors and dedicated sector-specific clusters.
The State, so far, has seen a significant rise in attracting manufacturing projects with more than 118 large projects approved with a potential to employ over a lakh people in the past 4 years.“Odisha has also made significant strides in implementing the ease of doing business reforms with the compliance percentage going up significantly from 52.12 pc in 2015 to 97.83 pc in 2017,” Chopra added.
The Principal Secretary (Industries) noted that raising the level of conversion of primary metal into value-added products within the state is the main focus. “While metal majors like NALCO, JSPL, Tata Steel or Vedanta have a manufacturing presence in our State, we have till now not had much success with downstream units in metal-based industries. The target is to achieve 50 per cent value addition of primary metal produced within the state from the current level of 10 per cent.”
Speaking of the pipeline project, Chopra said ITC Limited’s food processing unit coming up at Khurda has received approval to expand its product line. The expansion of the project would entail an additional investment of `63 crore and create additional employment for nearly 100 people. Recently, Chatterjee group arm, MCPI has submitted a proposal to set up a `1,000 crore polyester staple fibre (PSF) unit at Bhadrak Textiles Park, Odisha.
The State has also initiated talks with the likes of Tata Steel to set up an industrial park at Kalinga Nagar. While Tata Steel will provide raw material and hand hold smaller units that choose to set up base in the industrial park. Vedanta is looking at a similar facility at Jharsuguda he added while Nalco which is setting up an aluminium park and Angul has already received proposals worth Rs 1200-1300 crore.The State Government officials, who are on a roadshow in Kolkata, said they received good response from prospective investors. A similar roadshow is being planned to be held in Mumbai next month.