A.P. launches e- monitoring system to track projects

The Andhra Pradesh government will come up with a new industrial policy in the coming months and the ground work in this regard has already begun, said J.S.V. Prasad, Secretary, Industries Department, A.P.

He said new policies will be introduced to attract investments in the new State. “The Industrial Policy of 2010-15 will end in about six or seven months and we are working on the new policy. The officials have been meeting the local industrialists and taking their feedback in this regard. A State-level meeting with industrialists will also be held after which we will analyse and come up with the policy,” he said.

Presently about 20 big projects, mostly of infra and power sector, are stuck at various stages of clearances in AP. Mr. Prasad was speaking at the launch of e-PMS, a State-level investment tracking mechanism, on Friday.

Andhra Pradesh became the 13th State to launch such an online initiative which is meant for projects with investment between Rs 100 crore and Rs. 1000 crore. The entrepreneurs or industrialists can register themselves by providing their project details along with bottlenecks or issues and submit it to the sponsoring ministry or department.

After which, the issue will be reviewed and all the information regarding the minutes of the meeting or the reports concerned will be uploaded online, open for tracking by the concerned member.

Anil Swarup, additional secretary and chairman of Project Monitoring Group (PMG) in Cabinet Secretariat, Government of India, which has been facilitating clearance of stalled projects with investments of Rs. 1,000 crore and above, said they plan to introduce online clearance systems for environment, mining and other departments from September.

He envisioned to set up a web-based paperless system where one can submit a new project online and also get clearance there in a transparent manner. Fifty per cent problems of the stalled projects were related to the governments and added that the e-PMS mechanism would help in faster clearances of projects.

Mr. Anil Swarup said efforts were on for smooth completion of the Hyderabad Metro rail project. There were about seven to eight issues pertaining to the project and time lines were fixed to clear them. He also asserted that the Telangana government was supporting the project.