CHENNAI: Finance Minister Palanivel Thiaga Rajan on Tuesday submitted a list of demands and suggestions for the Union government to consider and sought its support for boosting investment and infrastructure development in Tamil Nadu. He made these demands while participating in a meeting chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman through a video-conference call with chief ministers and State finance ministers.
The minister sought cooperation to resolve bottlenecks faced in the expansion of Chennai, Coimbatore, Tiruchy, and Thoothukudi airports and said, for the Madurai airport, land acquisition and transfer to the Airports Authority of India (AAI) have been completed and urged the Centre to declare it an international airport soon to enable more trade and flights to the region.
Stating that the Thoothukudi VOC port is of strategic importance to the country and has great potential to be a transshipment hub, Rajan demanded that the master plan for the expansion of the port with the Outer Harbour project be taken up in earnest. The minister urged the Union government to come up with a comprehensive revival package for MSMEs, affected by the pandemic.
While appreciating the National Single Window Portal (Maadhyam) by the Centre for obtaining clearances from various departments, the minister recommended that aftercare services and grievance redressal mechanism could also be included in the platform. He suggested that the timeline for clearance under Central legislation could be reduced from the present four months to one month and import permits for medical devices and insecticides may be expedited.
The minister recommended that States may be permitted to borrow unconditionally within the prescribed limits and such limits should be decided based on the capacity of the State to absorb higher investments. On similar lines, the restriction of one project per annum per State from a given external agency should be discontinued to allow market mechanisms to function freely. These measures would benefit the State of Tamil Nadu, which is considered an attractive investment destination.