The Odisha government unveiled a strategic action plan for the implementation of the ‘Vision 2025’ which lays a road map for industrial growth in the state over the next decade during the recently concluded Odisha Investors meet in Bengaluru. The state has identified five focus sectors that include agro and food processing, chemicals and petrochemicals, textiles and apparel, downstream and ancillary industries in metal sector and electronic system design and manufacturing and IT/ITeS. The plan covers policy, infrastructure, investment promotion and skilling interventions that the state government plans to undertake for industrial development in these focus sectors.
The state government also launched an advance version of its industrial portal for land use and services i.e GOiPLUS. The GOiPLUS Version 2.0 provides information about the entire land bank available in the state for industrial use and works as a one-stop portal to provide information about all land related queries of an investor. Using the portal, an investor can get information about availability of land parcel in the vicinity of preferred infrastructure utilities such as airport, port etc.
In addition to this the Odisha government also launched its start up policy 2016 that aims to create 1,000 startups in the state by 2020. The policy will aim at providing incentives, support and assistance to start ups at all stages of development including idea or prototype stage, commercialisation stage as well as the marketing stage. The Odisha government has also set up a startup capital infrastructure fund upto Rs 25 crore that will be used to support development of startup ecosystem in the state.
“Our aim is to emerge amongst the top three start up hubs of the country through strategic partnerships and policy interventions to support start-ups. We also aim to facilitate at least 1,000 start ups in the next five years. Our government is working on dedicated sectoral policies for auto and auto components, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, plastics, chemicals and petrochemicals, renewable energy and textiles and apparel and our focus would be to promote employment intensive sectors. We would be launching all these sectoral policies before end of this year,” said Naveen Patnaik, the chief minister of Odisha during the investor meet in Bengaluru.
Pattnaik also added that it was his government’s endeavour to make the state capital Bhubaneswar as a model smart city for the entire nation as the city had topped the government of India’s smart city challenge. He felt that Odisha had the full potential to become the manufacturing hub of India’s eastern part and hence his government along with the central government will be hosting a ‘Make in Odisha’ Conclave at Bhubaneswar in December this year and invited investors to the state.
