Equipped with a land bank of 330 acres of pre-cleared sites, Punjab Government is all set to woo the investors, including from the foreign shores, ahead the Progressive Investment Summit, scheduled for October this year.
The state already has 662 plots, with total 330 acres approximately, with all required clearances in 18 focal points or industrial growth centres including Amritsar, Bathinda, Pathankot, Abohar, Mohali, Dera Bassi, Kapurthala, Batala, among others.
“These sites already have clearances of everything…forest, pollution, power…everything. You just have to plug in. We are ready with the land. No other state in the country offers land in this way,” said Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal on Wednesday.
The required clearances — no objection certificates from Forest department and state pollution control board, along with power, water and sewerage connections — have already been given to these plots by the respective departments.
“We would create pre-cleared land bank of more than 1000 acres in a year,” he announced. “We have land ready to give to the interested companies…We would offer them full package including land with all clearances, to give a major push to the investment in the state...we want to hit these companies,” said Sukhbir.
He said that he would soon be visiting the countries like Korea, China, Taiwan, Japan, “who are the major players in the current scenario. We want them to invest in Punjab”.
“Our main focus area would be electronics, information technology (IT), food processing, which have major scope as these sectors are emerging in a big way,” said Sukhbir.
Sukhbir also announced that the state would host the next Progressive Punjab Investment Summit on October 28 and 29 at Mohali’s Indian School of Business wherein world’s renowned industrial houses are likely to participate, without naming anyone.
“The summit would witness participation of many countries. We would be holding road shows showcasing our achievements, available incentives and facilities, the infrastructure and industrial scenario of the state to make aware the industrial houses where Punjab stands presently,” said Sukhbir.
Buoyed with the successful results in the investment scenario after the formation of Punjab Bureau of Investment Promotion (PBIP), Sukhbir said that the state has, till date, received “physical investment of Rs 12,700 cores by giving clearance to 182 projects in all and which are under construction stages”.
Among these, maximum 42 percent on investment came in the food processing sector, followed by 27 percent in manufacturing, 10 percent each in tourism and solar power, besides others. Maximum 36 projects have been cleared for Mohali, followed by 27 in ludhiana and 16 in Amritsar.
Sukhbir claimed that these projects would generate total employment of 90,078 including 33,167 direct and 56,911.
“Big players and companies have approached us and in the next two to three months, they will be on board and more investment will be coming in,” he said.
Patting his own back for setting up PBIP—one stop to give all clearances along with fiscal incentives to the industrial house which are attracting investment in the state, Sukhbir said that further efforts were being made to improve the working.
“We have set the target to give all clearances to every project within 30 days of the company approaches us and give application. But, for these projects, it has been 38 days on an average and we hope that we will improve this in near future,” he said.
SUKHBIR REITERATES HIS STAND OF PUNJAB A POWER SURPlUS STATE
Under attack of his claims of Punjab being power-surplus despite buying more power and people facing power cuts, Sukhbir Badal on Wednesday stick to his stand that the state is very much power surplus.
“I am once again announcing this today that Punjab is power surplus,” he said. It has been informed that the state has 11,664 mega watt of power and the peak load during the previous year was 10,450 MW.
Defending the state power utility’s decision to buy more power, Sukhbir cited the Supreme Court’s ruling on closing all the coal mines allotted during UPA government’s time, and the need to upgrade the power distribution network.
“Because of SC order, the coal mine, allotted to us, has been shut leading to drop in half of our supply. We have approached the Central Government in this regard…And, for the temporary arrangement, we are going for power purchase to meet the requirements,” said Sukhbir while maintaining that soon the state would get its coal mine, and the supply would become normal.
Sukhbir, who also holds Power portfolio, attributed the power cuts to the need to upgrade the power distribution network.
“The power supply involves three things — generation, transmission, and distribution. Our generation is surplus, and we have upgraded the transmission to a high level. All we need to do is upgrade distribution network and we are, in past one year, working on the same,” he said.
He said: “We have come out with Rs 16,000 crore project under which, all the transformers, poles, wiring would be undergrounded…Once this project is completed, there would be not a single power cuts.”
SUKHBIR'S AMPHIBIAN BUSES TO BE SOON ON ROAD
If the claims of Sukhbir Badal are to be believed, his dream amphibian buses would soon be seen on road. Sukhbir, who knows that he has been a butt of jokes for his bizarre ideas such as launching amphibian buses which can run on roads and also water, maintained that such buses will soon be seen in Punjab.
“The Punjab Infrastructure Development Board has called for quotations…these buses would be purely for tourism purposes and as per plans, it would run between Amritsar to Harike,” he said, while refusing to divulge any further details.
Just as the journos present in the press briefing could not conceal their laughter, Sukhbir ask that each one of them would be made to travel in these buses once launched.