Unveils key initiatives to remove infra bottlenecks
Almost 50 days into his tenure as the State’s Chief Secretary, Gokul Chandra Pati seems to have already made his vision clear, expediting the Government agenda of development through industrialisation in a time-bound manner.
Ever since taking charge on August 1, he has already outlined a series of key initiatives to boost industrialisation and investment which have been suffering from multiple bottlenecks.
The Government’s decision to put in place a long-term raw material linkage policy to supply iron ore and chrome ore to industries that have signed MoUs with it is a key step in this direction.
This will be facilitated through five-year contracts between the industries and the Odisha Mining Corporation. It was also hinted that similar arrangements may also be made for bauxite and manganese in the near future.
To remove infrastructural hurdles, a number of initiatives have been announced recently including developing a land bank of at least 50,000 acres for public and industrial purposes. To address the issue of land acquisition, the Industries Department has been asked to work out a definite work strategy for land acquisition in the light of the new land acquisition Act.
The Chief Secretary has also directed to streamline the single-window mechanism, hold IPICOl single-window meetings more frequently and address the pending issues of already cleared proposals for expediting them.
The Industry Department has also been asked to finalise the draft IPR for 2014 within this month. With a view to boosting the bottom of the pyramid, the Chief Secretary has directed to focus on development of downstream and value-addition industries in clusters.
Steel plants are being asked to promote the downstream industries and at least 25 per cent of the steel produced in the State should be put to value addition in downstream industries. The department has been asked to deploy dedicated teams for each industrial cluster with firm datelines for milestones to be accomplished. The key to success, however, would be timeliness of the projects and the new Chief Secretary seems focused on that very aspect.