Himachal CM invites 1,400 industrialists to business meet

Shimla, Nov 2 :

Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh has written more than 1,400 letters to leading industrialists for an investors’ meet this week, an official said here Sunday.

In the first phase, investors’ meet will be organised in association with the Confederation of India Industries (CII) in Mumbai, Bangalore and Ahmedabad Nov 5-8, a government spokesperson told IANS.

“The state government is also contemplating to freeze the power tariff for the (new) industries for the next five years,” a government statement said.

One of the biggest advantages the state has is the availability of quality power at one of the cheapest rates in the country, it added.

Besides this, the state is also providing industrial incentives and concessions related to local taxes, labour laws, land allotments in industrial areas and estates and incentives for exports.

Some areas where the private sector participation is encouraged are tourism, infrastructure like housing, power generation and software and information technology.

The chief minister along with Industries Minister Mukesh Agnihotri and government functionaries will meet investors and try to project the state as an ideal destination for investment owing to surplus electricity and cheap manpower.

The state has also put in place a fast-track and a simplified procedure for the transfer of land for industrial purposes, said the spokesperson for the department of industries.

He said the government is allowing transfer of private land for industrial, tourism and hydel purposes within a short period.

A single window clearance and monitoring authority under the chairmanship of Virbhadra Singh has been constituted to ensure expeditious clearances from the respective departments for setting up of new units.

A combined intra-departmental application form has been made available to facilitate the entrepreneurs and time-bound clearance is being giving within 90 days, the spokesperson said.

In the second phase, the investors’ meet will be held next month in Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and New Delhi.

Official data shows that Himachal Pradesh got maximum investment from 2003 to 2010 when there was a special industrial package of the central government.

Most investments were in pharmaceutical, food processing, textile, packaging and light engineering sectors.

(IANS)