Soon, those looking to invest $500 million or more in the country will have
a designated person who will facilitate all clearances — from the Centre to
local bodies — with officials from state government and central ministries
too converging on one place to address investor queries and enhance flows.
Drawing from the experience in Gujarat, the department for promotion of
industry and internal trade (DPIIT) and Invest India have joined hands to
put in place a new mechanism aimed at attracting investors, many of whom
have in the past complained of a plethora of clearances holding up their
plans, officials told TOI.
“Very soon, we will be announcing it. Within Invest India, another format in
which we actually do hand-holding from investment query that anybody
makes to operationalising it in the field,” DPIIT secretary Guruprasad
Mohapatra said at an event on Monday.
While the issue has been discussed with commerce and industry minister
Piyush Goyal, a formal approval is awaited.
Now, Invest India scouts for space
DPIIT secretary Guruprasad Mohapatra, who comes from the Gujarat cadre,
is drawing upon the western state’s experience during PM Narendra Modi’s
term where investment proposals were cleared quickly and facilitated by
iNDEXTb, the state investment promotion body.
The Centre’s investment promotion agency Invest India is scouting for space,
where officials from several ministries, including tax and environment and
forest, will be present to address investment queries. State governments, too,
will depute officers at the facility.
The move follows several steps that have already been initiated. For instance,
DPIIT has already put in place a platform that provides information on
21,000 acres of land that is almost in plug-and-play state across state
industrial parks and the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor.
Mohapatra has now asked for land available across private sector industrial
parks also to be housed on the online platform so that investors can decide
the location.
Invest India, which already facilitates global investors, now intends to
provide “relationship managers” to all investors looking to invest $500
million or more in the country.
Source: The Economic Times, India Thursday, 24 October 2019