BHUBANESWAR: The State government on Monday decided to set up District Investment Promotion Agencies (DIPAs) in different districts in phases to facilitate grounding of projects on time by extending handholding support to entrepreneurs during implementation.
A high-level meeting chaired by Chief Secretary Suresh Mahapatra gave its go ahead to pilot intervention in three districts - Ganjam, Sundargarh and Jagatsinghpur.
“The proposed DIPAs will be set up in different districts in a phased manner with feedback and learning about the functioning and outcome of the agencies from each preceding phase. The first phase piloting will start from August,” said Principal Secretary of Industry department Hemant Kumar Sharma. He said such agencies will be opened in Angul, Balasore, Jajpur, Jharsuguda, Keonjhar, Rayagada and Sambalpur on the basis of learning from the pilot phase. It has been targeted to cover all districts by end of March, 2022.
Each of the DIPAs will be managed by three professionals under the direct supervision of the respective district collector and will function as an extended arm of the Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Odisha Limited (IPICOL). It will operate as single-point-contact for all entrepreneurs and investors, he added.
The key role of DIPAs will be to promote micro, small and medium enterprises for creating large-scale employment, ensuring early resolution of investor grievances, creating land bank for fast project implementation and monitoring infrastructure support like power and water supply and road connectivity to the project site.
The Chief Secretary directed the Collectors to take proactive role in promotion of MSMEs which are movers of economic growth and generate employment at district level. He further directed them to provide decent office space in the collectorates for setting up the units. The efficiency of DIPAs will be monitored by State-level Single Window Clearance Authority and evaluated by annual rankings of districts primarily based on investor suggestions.