Hyderabad, November 09: Chief Minister K Rosaiah will lay the foundation stone soon for construction of a ferro alloys unit at Bobbili in Vizianagaram district soon.
The project, with an initial capital of Rs 200 crore, will be set up by Rashtriya Ispat Nigam Limited, Visakhapatnam in association with Manganese Ore India Limited, Nagpur.
According to an official press release here today, Union Minister for Steel A Sai Pratap has made request to the chief minister to lay the foundation and the latter gave his consent.
The unit is expected to provide employment to the local youth and also give boost to ancillary industries in that region.
Meanwhile, the chief minister during a discussion with officials of the industries department, announced government’s commitment to adopt a multi-pronged strategy to promote industries and attract investments in the State. Apart from providing various concessions in the form of subsidies and incentives to help industries become competitive and grow at a brisk pace, power tariff was being maintained at the lowest level, compared to other States in the country, he said.
The chief minister, who is going to review the progress of industrialisation in the State at a meeting soon, asked Major Industries Minister Kanna Lakshminarayana today to be in constant touch with prospective investors for industrial promotion in the State. Rosaiah directed principal secretary (industry) Sam Bob to submit a detailed report on the status of industrialisation at the next review meeting.
Several world-class companies offered to establish their production units in the State, Rosaiah recalled and said that work on the first phase of the prestigious semi-conductor manufacturing facility, FabCity, was under way.
The chief minister said that for the benefit of handloom weavers and the leather industry, textile and leather parks were being established in all the regions of the State. In 2006 investment proposals worth Rs 93,000 crore, constituting 10.2 per cent of investments in the country, were cleared by the State Government.
During the last three and a half years, Rs 12,350 crore worth of investments in manufacturing sector were commissioned creating employment for 1,72,616 persons, he said. In the next two to three years, Rs 38,671 crore is likely to be invested creating an employment potential of 1,30,458.
“According to a survey conducted by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Andhra Pradesh is the `best performing’ State in the South in the manufacturing sector,’’ Rosaiah said and added that the World Bank Report on `Doing Business in India 2009’ had ranked Hyderabad as the second best metro city in India among the 17 metro cities.
The Petroleum, Chemical, Petrochemical Investment Region (PCPIR) project sanctioned by the Union Government, encompassing an area of 604 sq km, was one of the prestigious projects in the petroleum, chemical and refinery sector, Rosaiah claimed.
The PCPIR was expected to attract investments to the tune of Rs 3.43 lakh crore and had an employment potential of 12 lakh, he observed.
–Agencies