Maharashtra government has acquired additional 40,000 acres of land around the Samruddhi corridor to develop industrial clusters, based on the needs of the industry, stated Venugopal Reddy, Principal Secretary (Industries), Maharashtra Government. He was speaking at the webinar series ‘The changing contours of Maharashtra’ on the topic ‘Industrial clusters, township and IT’. The other panellists for the session were Tej Paul Bhatla, VP & Head Public Services Business India, TCS; Mohit Bhasin, Partner and Lead, KPMG; and Vijay Waghmare, Joint Managing Director, MSRDC.
Venugopal Reddy said, “Recently, Maharashtra state has acquired 40,000 acres of land which can provide space for developing industrial clusters, in addition to the existing clusters.” Reddy added that apart from the 40,000 acres that has been acquired, the nodes in Samruddhi corridor will provide new avenues to industries. “To tap this potential, we need to broaden our imagination and vision,” Reddy suggested. He further added AURIC (Aurangabad Industrial City) has 10,000 acres of land; then there is the upcoming Dighi-Mangaon Industrial corridor as well. “We have planned the Bangalore-Mumbai economic corridor which will be notified soon.”
Commenting about industrial clusters, Mohit Bhasin stated that the plug and play concept for industry is a very interesting concept. “The way AURIC is reinventing itself and providing the land parcels to existing expansions by fresh investors is a model to look at,” Bhasin asserted.
Adding to it, Vijay Waghmare said, MSRDC has taken up the responsibility of developing the new industrial townships in the Samruddhi corridor. This is not to compete with MIDC but to complement MIDC’s effort in the state. He clarified, “MSRDC will complement MIDC’s efforts in areas like AURIC.” Waghmare went on to add that MSRDC is inviting industries to collectively decide on the location where they would like to set-up the industry rather than creating sector-specific locations.
Maharashtra’s innovative approach has made the state appealing to investors. “Maharashtra has a very strong track record of picking up very high-profile investors especially in the last three-four years which other states have found very challenging. This is purely because of the progressive nature of the system that operates to serve the industry,” Bhasin stated.
Other than giving a boost to greenfield projects, Tej Paul Bhatla stated the Samruddhi corridor will give a boost to existing businesses as well. “Samruddhi project, which will link Mumbai to Nagpur, will be interesting for us because we have already set up an SEZ facility in Nagpur. It has on-boarded up to 8,000 people, and will become a 10,000-people facility soon.” He said that the Samruddhi project will help TCS' associates to use this expressway to travel across Maharashtra. He also urged MSRDC officials to use IOT, drones and other technologies to improve the efficiency of the expressway further.
