An initiative to create world-class industrial infrastructure stays as the major agenda of the Odisha government with the development of various sector-specific industrial parks in the state.

“The Plastic Park at Paradip, Aluminium Park at Angul, Seafood Park at Deras and Electronics Park at Bhubaneswar are already completed and have become functional. With state-of-the-art infrastructure in place and having attractive land prices, these projects are attracting investors to invest in Odisha”, Pratap Keshari Deb, Minister of Industries said on Tuesday.

In the Seafood Park and Plastic Park, more than 50 per cent leasable area has already been allotted to units. In the Electronic Park, RBI has started construction of Hyper-data centre and other similar projects are in pipeline, he informed.

Highlighting some new initiatives, Minister Deb said that in the coming years, the Industries Department has a target for construction of worker’s hostels at 13 locations having a combined capacity of 26,000 in multiple locations across the State.

Worker’s Hostel will be a value proposition as a basic infrastructure for Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME) and large units coming to set up their units inside Government developed Industrial Estates.

Similarly, the Government has set the target to incur expenditure of about Rs. 200 crore for land bank for procurement of both government and private land, making it ready for attracting investors.

The state government has identified more than 5,000 acres of land along the Biju expressway for development of more than 25 clusters starting from Rourkela (Sundergarh) to Motu (Malkangiri) of 10 districts.

The government has also made special provision of incentives for the proposed units along Biju expressway in notified Industrial areas.

Steps have been taken for development of large area industrial estates from surrendered land by Central Public Sector Undertaking or identifying new land parcels for industry ready infrastructure from day one. Such facilities will come up at Neulopoi (Dhenkanal), Naraj (Cuttack), Gajamara & Kamakhyanagar in Dhenkanal district, the minister informed.

The Government has set a target for construction of commercial built up space for Industries as enabling infrastructure at 8 locations in first phase (Khurda, Angul, Sambalpur, Jajpur, Paradip, Balasore, Berhampur & Barbil) and further 3 locations (Rourkela, Khurda and Kalahandi) with a  combined capacity of more than 50 lakhs square feet area, Hemant Sharma , Secretary, Industries said.