Bhubaneswar, June 2: The state government has told the Centre that Odisha is one of the leaders in attracting investments from the private sector.
The state has been consistently ranked top three states for attracting private investments. “In September 2013, the RBI ranked Odisha as the No. 1 state in the country in attracting investments of approximately 100 billion US dollar which account for 27 per cent of the total committed investments in India,” said industries secretary Vishal Dev.
In a letter to Amitabh Kant, secretary of the industrial policy and promotion department, Dev said: “The state has grown at more than 9 per cent during 2001-10. Odisha had reduced poverty by 20 per cent during 2004-10 — the highest among all states in the country.” But, the state remains silent on how the industrialisation has been affected due to closure of mines.
While responding to Kant’s letter regarding the best practices to improve business environment across the states and Union territories, the state government said this had been possible due to the practices to promote industrial and infrastructural developments.
Dev also said Odisha was one of the pioneers in creating legislative framework for investment facilitation and enacted the Odisha Industries (Facilitation) Act, 2004, a single-window mechanism created for approval of projects.
The chief minister has chaired the High-level Clearance Authority to clear the proposal of investments worth more than Rs 10 billion. The chief secretary presided over the State-level Single-Window Clearance Authority to approve investment proposals of more than Rs 500 million. There is also a district-level single window clearance authority to approve investments up to Rs 500 million.
“The committee, headed by the chief secretary, reviews the progress of all projects on a regular basis,” Dev said, adding that Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Odisha Limited had institutionalised a forum to address investors’ grievances and queries named the Investors’ Connect, launched in November 2013.
The corporation is in the process of restructuring the combined application form, a precursor to a single-window approval, Dev said.
