Gujarat To Focus On Ports For Future Growth

The Gujarat government has drawn up a port driven development programme for the state as part of its vision 2010. Briefing reporters here today Suresh Mehta, Minister of Industries of Gujarat state said that this programme would entail a total investment of $29 billion over a 10 year period.

Among the projects proposed to be developed included ports which would cost about $15 billion , power projects worth about $10 billion, Industrial townships worth about $3 billion and state highways development of about $1 billion.

The draft for this programme was drawn up by the Tata Consultancy Services limited and this was being scrutinised by the state government Mehta said.

The programme involved creation of a special chemical port terminal at Dahej, terminals for discharging liquefied natural gas and port based power projects and cretion of 12 port based cement plants with a capacity of about 3 million tonnes each.

The minister said that these funds would be raised through a combination of budget financing, private sector investment in the domestic and international markets, multilateral assistance and leveraging of funds through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) as has been done in the case of the Sardar Sarovar project.

He said that among the projects as part of this infrastructure development prgramme also included two water projects, for pipelining of potable water to the drought prone north western region of the state.

This project was expected to cost about Rs 3500 crore and another water supply project from the Narmada linking up canals costing about Rs 4700 crore.

The state, he said, had also been able to secure assistance from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) of $one billion.

The state government had already drawn the first tranche of this loan and the second tranche of this loan was due to be released soon, he added.

He also said that the state government had carried out a series of divestment programmes in the major state public sector undertakings to raise resources and intended to carry out more such excercises.

For rehabilitating some of the sick industries in the state, a Gujrat state financial and industrial restructuring board had been set up, especially for the medium and small scale industries in the state.

Earlier speaking at the India Economic summit, jointly organised by the World Economic Forum and the Confederation of Indian Industry, the chief secretary of the state L N S Mukundan said that 1000 megawatts of capacity had been added during the last financial year and another 800 mw was being added during the current year.

For the next year, the state hoped to add another 1000 mw more of capacity, he added.

He also said that the state had also prepared for a long range energy plan which envisaged creation of a capacity, which envisaged complete elimination of power cuts. This programme envisaged reaching a capacity of 15000 mw by 2002.

The state had also been selected for hosting the Intechmart 98 by the United Nations Industrial Development Organsiation. This programme will start on December 4 and will focus primarily on attracting investors in infrastructure projects, including roads, water , ports and airports.