Other States - Orissa   

New SEZ policy on the anvil

Bhubneswar: Orissa will soon come out with a SEZ policy keeping the social and business interests in mind.

“SEZ is a very complex word involving lot of issues. Nevertheless, one just cannot ignore the benefits of having SEZs in the State.

At the same time, there are some issues to be sorted out. The earlier SEZ policy of the Centre had many shortcomings and hence we will come out with a policy which would be acceptable to all,” Biswabhusan Harichandan, Minister for Industries, told a group of visiting journalists.

With incidents of Singur and Nandigram in West Bengal along with Kalinganagar in Orissa, where there were large scale protests by landowners whose lands were being taken for various industrial projects, bringing the government’s rehabilitation policy into question, the Minister added that steps were being taken so that no such incidents recurred.

“The incidents have reached such a grave stage because of the handiwork of certain political parties. Taking genuine grievances into account, we have also brought out a special rehabilitation package,” the Minister added.

Senior officials looking after the rehabilitation process added that dialogues were undertaken with local people and hence every major son within a family would be treated as a separate family and unmarried women above the age of 30 would also be regarded so.

They added that one member from each family would be given jobs at the factory for which their land had been taken after giving appropriate monetary compensation for the land.

The officials, however, remained silent when asked for any concrete long-term financial support for other family members.

Talking about the steps taken to promote industries in the State, the Minister added that the government had already scrapped some rules relating to setting up of industries and was in the process of identifying more of such rules.

“For facilitating industrial development, we have enacted the Industry Facilitation Act giving way to single window system under which all officials will come together for investments below Rs. 1000 crores and examine the application together.

Higher level investments will be done after getting clearance from the concerned committee chaired by the Chief Minister himself. The Finance Minister and two other Ministers are members of the committee,” he said.

The Minister added that the government had already signed 60 MoUs and 43 were in the steel sector.

“Since our State is rich in natural resources, we have made a rule that from now we will not give any new mining rights unless they set up an industry here,” he said.

The Minister added that projects were currently in process for connecting all villages by road under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY) and providing them with drinking water.

“To provide the best infrastructure for industries, we are also promoting greater State-private partnership along with upgradation of all our ports which can be used for transportation of raw as well as finished goods,” Mr. Harichandan said. – PTI

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