New land policy for industries in West Bengal

Wednesday, 18 February 2009, 15:50 IST
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Raghunathpur: In a bid to help companies by ensuring their downstream units are set up on contiguous land, the West Bengal government has chalked out a new land acquisition strategy for allotting land to industrial parks rather than to individual units. The new strategy has been put into operation for the first time in Purulia district, where three new large steel plants with a total production capacity of seven million tonnes are set to come up. "We have initiated the new model from Purulia with regard to the land acquisition in three big private sector projects - Jai Balaji Industries, Shyam Steel and Adhunik," West Bengal Industrial Development Corp (WBIDC) managing director Subrata Gupta told reporters after the foundation stone laying ceremony of Shyan Steel's 1.1 million tonne integrated plant here. "There will be three separate steel parks, where each of these three companies will be the anchor investor. And they will support the downstream units," Gupta said. Around 15-20 percent of the land allotted in each of the projects will be earmarked for ancillary and downstream units to create common infrastructure like roads, water and rail. In Raghunathpur, the three steel parks being developed by WBIDC are 2,500 acres for Adhunik, 3,600 acres for Jai Balaji and 1,200 acres for Shyam Steel. "We wish to create environment and woo ancillary investors here so that the mother plant gets readymade buyers and the ancillary units benefit from practically zero raw material transportation cost," he said. The Purulia model will be copied in Burdwan district for Bhushan Steel's project at Salanpur and Videocon's plant at Jamuria. "We have introduced stricter norms for companies that want land for setting up industry and the expert committee will regularly supervise developments. If we find any industry is delaying implementation of the project, we can always take away the land and hand it over to other companies," he added.
Source: IANS
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