By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, June 7, 2018: Hyderabad based companies have evinced interest in investing Odisha in certain focus areas like food processing and seafood, ancillary and downstream industries in metal sector, textiles, electronics system design and manufacturing, skill development, chemicals, plastics and petrochemicals.

The potential investors on Thursday were attending an investors meet on Thursday organised by Odisha government in Hyderabad to showcase the inherent advantages of investing in Odisha in the run up to the Make in Odisha Conclave 2018.

The state government delegation led by Sanjeev Chopra, Principal Secretary (Industries) met 24 Hyderabad-based companies to attract investments to Odisha. The state government has set an ambitious target of attracting 2.5 lakh crore of fresh investments and generating 30 lakh job opportunities

During the meetings with investors, the delegation highlighted the strategic advantages of Odisha as the low cost of doing business, incentives for investors, dedicated sector-specific clusters and over 1.21 lakh acres of land bank available for industrial development.

The investors meet witnessed encouraging response with 24 leading companies meeting the delegation and exploring attractive growth opportunities across Odisha’s focus sectors, officials said.

“We are pleased to receive an encouraging response from the business community of Hyderabad. Odisha’s investor-friendly policies and the development of world-class infrastructure have received very positive feedback from investors across the country as we have been able to create an ideal business ecosystem for various sectors to flourish in the state. We are positive about attracting significant investments from Hyderabad-based companies in the near future,” Chopra said.

There has been a significant rise in attracting manufacturing projects with more than 118 large projects cleared by the state authority with employment potential of 1,28,572 in the past four years in the State.

The average time taken for approval of the projects is also reduced to 20 days from the date of receipt of completed project application. “Odisha has also made significant strides in implementing the ease of doing business reforms with the compliance percentage going up significantly from 52.12% in 2015 to 97.83% in 2017”, Chopra added.

The delegation also participated in a roadshow jointly organized with Indian Oil Corporation Limited in Hyderabad yesterday where the strategic advantages and opportunities for manufacturing plastics at Paradip Plastics Park were showcased. Some 50 entrepreneurs and investors from the industry attended the roadshow.

Several Hyderabad-based companies have invested in Odisha in the recent past. Bharat Biotech’s vaccine manufacturing unit is coming up here while the groundbreaking for the unit was conducted in November last year. Toshali Cements, a multinational company based in Hyderabad recently inaugurated its 3.86 lakh MT per annum cement manufacturing plant at Choudwar in Cuttack district.

The biennial Make in Odisha Conclave 2018 is scheduled to be held in Bhubaneswar from November 11-15, 2018.