By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, September 3, 2015 : The much awaited Industrial Policy Resolution (IPR) – 2015 aims at raising the share of manufacturing from the present level of 10 percent to 15 percent of Odisha’s gross state domestic product [GSDP].

To achieve this, the state hopes to attract Rs 1.73 lakh crore new investments which will facilitate in creation of three lakh direct jobs, chief minister Naveen Patnaik announced while launching the new IPR on Thursday.

“The government is making concerted efforts to attract anchor investments in priority sectors which will be extended additional incentives. Besides, the state government is in the process of creating a large land bank to meet the industrial requirements of future. 10,000 acres will be added to the pool by the year-end and we propose to have a fairly large land pool readily available for use of industries by next year,” Patnaik said.

IPR 2015 puts emphasis on wooing investments in the emerging sectors such as electronics manufacturing, food processing, textiles and downstream industries in steel and aluminium to generate sustainable employment opportunities for the unemployed in the state. It also provides for an initial corpus of Rs 100 crores to provide external infrastructure such as power, water, access roads to the industrial clusters.

“I am extremely happy that operational guidelines of IPR 2015 have also been finalized. This will ensure that the provisions of the IPR are put into practice and the entrepreneurs receive the benefits without any delay. Already a number of reform measures have been put in place and necessary amendments carried out to the rules of the Odisha Industries Facilitation Act,” he added.

The notable feature of the policy is to back up employment intensive industries. An innovative employment rating based system is to be adopted to provide incentives in power tariff and manpower training cost for employment intensive industries, the policy stipulates.

Besides, the new IPR strengthens the single window system to realize the committed investments on the ground. The time frame
for project approvals has been reduced to 15 days for greenfield projects and 30 days for other projects. The government has also initiated the provision of deemed approval to ensure timely implementation of projects on the basis of various clearances issued by line departments within the specified timelines.

Apart from IPR 2015, Invest Odisha mobile application, Invest Odisha website and web-enabled GIS portal for land information system GO iplus were also launched on the occasion.