Global Investors Summit 2020: UP to create 1,000-acre land bank for MSMEs

Land bank will flank expressways, industrial corridors for optimising potential

The Uttar Pradesh government plans to create industrial land bank totalling 1,000 acres ahead of the ‘Global Investors Summit’ next February. The event, fashioned along the lines of Vibrant Gujarat, seeks to showcase the state as an ideal investment destination globally.

The land bank will be created in parcels flanking existing or proposed expressways such as the Agra-Lucknow Expressway, Purvanchal Expressway and Bundelkhand Expressway , or industrial corridors, such as Defence Manufacturing Corridor.

Once the land is identified and transferred to the MSME department, it would be used for both setting up common facility centres and allotment to entrepreneurs for industrial units.

UP MSME department principal secretary Navneet Sehgal has directed all the district magistrates to identify 5 acres of suitable land within 5 km distance from the expressways and corridors in the next 15 days.

Under the existing UP MSME and export promotion policy 2017, at least 10 acres of land belonging to the respective ‘gram-sabha’ is to be handed over to the state industries department for the development of micro and small enterprises sector.

“Once the land is identified, our officials would visit the site for further action, so that we have a sufficiently large land bank before the proposed Global Investors Summit 2020 and are in the position to promptly provide land for industrial units,” Sehgal told Business Standard today.

He said that the land that had in the past been allotted to entrepreneurs who failed to set up their units, would also be taken back for fresh allotment to other industrialists.

At the same time, the state government is mulling an amendment to the MSME policy in order to make it more attractive and contemporary to the needs of industry, especially in the context of the Adityanath government targetting a trillion-dollar economy status for UP by 2024, in line with the $5 trillion vision for India by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Sehgal said the department had already floated the proposal before the state industrial chambers for their suggestion, so that the official draft is given the final shape and forwarded to the state cabinet for approval.

Meanwhile, the state government is following up on industrial projects totalling nearly Rs 1.25 trillion, whose foundation has been laid pursuant to the ‘UP Investors Summit’ in February 2018, that fetched UP investment proposals worth Rs 4.68 trillion. Many of these projects are in the pipeline, while some entrepreneurs have sought allotment of land. Such requests would also be catered with the proposed land bank.

The MSME sector, which contributes 60 per cent to UP's annual industrial output, employs nearly 4 crore people and generates direct economic activity worth Rs 1.5 trillion a year, according to industry sources.