Chhattisgarh braces for buoyant 2010

The industrial sector in Chhattisgarh government termed 2009 as good while the investors said it was bad.

With no major fresh proposal coming in the state during 2009, those who had submitted proposals last year or before continued to struggle to put things on right stream. The bigger concern was land allotment. Besides Tatas, who are setting up a mega steel plant in Bastar, all the big investors failed to get land. "As far as the industrial sector is concerned, the growth in the year is not on expected lines," said a senior executive of a company setting up a power plant in Raigarh.

As the land allotment process on the part of the state government was slow, most of the major proposals could not take shape during 2009, the executive added.

The state government, however, clarified that a series of elections starting from Lok Sabha to urban bodies hampered the process. The election code of conduct and the indefinite strike by the revenue employees stalled the process, a senior industry department official said.

For the industrial sector, the year was good, Industry Secretary P Ramesh Kumar claimed. "A few proposals of small power projects have taken shape during the year," he said, adding that proposals in steel sector were affected due to slump in the economy.

"The year 2010 would be of great opportunities," Kumar added. While the Naxalite threat against proposed steel plants of Tata and Essar in Bastar continued to haunt the industries during the year, many major corporates had a tough time in 2009.

Vedanta-controlled Balco was witness to the biggest industrial accident of Chhattisgarh when 41 people were killed as an under-construction chimney as its power plant collapsed in September. In the same month, another incident that stunned the industries in Chhattisgarh was the state government's action to attach the bank account of Bhilai Steel Plant (BSP), the flagship entity of the Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), for failing to pay dues to the commercial tax department. But the year otherwise had brought big respite to the SAIL. In October, the steel major was awarded mining lease for the Rowghat deposit-F spread over 2028.79 hectares in a pocket between Kanker and Narayanpur districts of Chhattisgarh.