The Telangana government will usher in a unified inspection policy from April next year where departments including labour, boilers, pollution control board, industries and others will conduct a joint visit and certify. Validity of inspections too will be increased from the current annual and five years to longer periods, said Industries, IT and Municipal Administration Minister K.T. Rama Rao on Wednesday.
And like online permissions, incentives to the industries too will be remitted into the concerned bank accounts without anyone running around officials, he said, while addressing the 12{+t}{+h}edition of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) ‘MAN’EXE – 2016’, with the theme ‘Make in Telangana: sustainable growth through innovation and future technologies’.
Stating that it was not enough to have just an ‘entry policy’, the Minister said business continuity was important too and so also an ‘exit policy’.
“A dispute resolution mechanism is also being discussed about and we will be the first State to have a tribunal exclusively to deal with industrial issues,” he said.
Delivering the inaugural address, Mr. Rao said the State had dealt with power shortage and it has about 250,000 acres acquired land, free from any encumbrances, readily available. Other infrastructure issues like roads and water were also being taken care of.
Pointing out that manufacturing was a key component of the industry, he said the government gives equal importance to the manufacturing sector as it gives to the IT sector considering the number of jobs that can be created. In fact, at 28.7 per cent of TS GDP, the sector is the second highest in the country after Gujarat.
The TRS government with K. Chandrasekhar Rao as Chief Minister was committed to rapid industrialisation and the focus was going beyond ‘ease of doing business’ to ‘quality of doing business’ and ‘cost of doing business’. The industrial policy (TS-iPASS) with self-certification, online processing and penalties on officials for delay had set a new benchmark. As a result, about 2,300 units took permissions and half of them began commercial production.
Discussions with RBI
The Minister said discussions were at an advanced stage with the Reserve Bank of India to support the government’s proposal to an industrial revival policy or ‘health clinics’ to be rolled out in November so that banks go for priority lending towards turning around the sick units.
He also mentioned about dry ports coming up at Zaheerabad (along with investment and manufacturing zone) and on Hyderabad outskirts to facilitate import/exports, first phase of Pharma City of 4,000 acres to kick off this year, medical devices park at Sultanpur, Plastics City, electronics manufacturing centres near airport, food processing park at Toopran, aerospace park, etc.
CII report released
Earlier, Mr. Rao released a report ‘Telangana – Gateway to the future of manufacturing’. CII-Telangana Chairman Nrupender Rao, CII-South chairman Ramesh Datla, CII-VC V. Rajanna also spoke.
