Gaurav Choudhury and Shreya Nandi
Moneycontrol
India’s plans to create its own versions of China-style mega industrial cities peppered across the country equipped with production units, public utilities, residential areas, schools and hospitals will likely get a big fiscal push in Budget 2017-18.
Finance minister Arun Jaitley will likely raise the outlay for industrial corridors substantially from Rs 1448 crore in 2016-17, signalling the government’s intent to use these mega enclaves as one of the major vehicles to push the `Make in India’ initiative, a source in the know told Moneycontrol.
The country has notified five major industrial corridors – Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), Amritsar Kolkata Industrial Corridor (AKIC), Chennai Bengaluru Industrial Corridor (CBIC), Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor (VCIC) and Bengaluru- Mumbai Economic Corridor (BMEC), spread across 15 states.
The government also plans set up a National Industrial Corridor Development Authority (NICDA) on the lines of the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI).
NICDA will be headquartered in Pune. It would serve as the nodal body to oversee and coordinate work related to the development of the industrial corridors with smart cities linked to transport connectivity, to drive India’s growth in manufacturing and urbanisation.
NICDA’s setting up has already seen a delay of over two years, with the Centre had announcing its inception in July, 2014, with a corpus of Rs 100 crore.
Bringing all the corridors under the ambit of an authority (NICDA) will provide more clarity to investors about India’s industrial corridor policy and enable better coordination with multilateral agencies like Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
“It (NICDA) will channelize central as well as institutional funds while ensuring that the various corridors are properly planned and implemented keeping in view the broad national perspectives regarding industrial and city development,” Commerce and Industry Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said in a written reply to Rajya Sabha in August.
DMIC, the first of the planned corridor is currently under development. The project aims to develop new industrial cities as smart cities, converging next generation technologies across infrastructure sectors. In addition to new industrial cities, the project envisages development of infrastructure linkages like power plants, assured water supply, high capacity transportation and logistics facilities as well as softer interventions like skill development plan.
DMIC has been conceptualized in partnership and collaboration with Government of Japan. In the first phase, eight new industrial cities are being developed across six states - Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat.
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