Industrial zones: Govt to ease land requirement

Unable to extract a good response from the industry, the government is soon going to infuse new life into the National Manufacturing Policy by reducing the minimum land size required for setting up a manufacturing zones.

Unable to extract a good response from the industry, the government is soon going to infuse new life into the National Manufacturing Policy (NMP) by reducing the minimum land size required for setting up a manufacturing zones.

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According to sources, the major reason behind the policy not functioning is the inability of the states to provide land to the tune of at least 50 sq km (5,000 hectares), which is the minimum requirement for a manufacturing zone.

“States have shown a greater interest in developing industrial corridors instead of having a manufacturing zone, which has left the Centre to come up with some corrective steps in the policy and land size,” a senior government official privy to the development said.

The nodal ministry for the NMP—the department of industrial policy and promotion (DIPP)—is also planning to align the Amritsar-Kolkata, Bangalore-Chennai and Chennai-Vizag corridors with the NMP so that the manufacturers setting up base in them can take the benefits of the policy.

Tax breaks are also proposed in NMP that are yet to be utilised by the manufacturers. “Once, the policy gets linked with the industrial corridors the government expects that the benefits in the policy such as single-window clearances will help in ease of doing business as well,” the official added.