Odisha PMG to fast track industrial projects

Cabinet Committee on Investments chooses state over 14 others as it has a greater number of projects

The Project Monitoring Group (PMG) of the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) today unveiled a state level PMG for Odisha meant for fast tracking industrial and infrastructure projects with investments in the range of Rs 100-1,000 crore.

“Fourteen states have agreed to launch the mechanism but Odisha is chosen first. The state is chosen because it is ahead in terms of number of projects, problems and the commitment to get the issues resolved,” said Anil Swarup, additional secretary at the Cabinet Secretariat and head, PMG in the CCI.

He was speaking at an interactive meeting and launch of Investment Tracking Mechanism at the state level, organized by Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and industry (Ficci), Odisha. Swarup said, the decisions will be strictly taken by the concerned ministry and not the PMG.

“It is an institutional framework where the industry can narrate their problems. Our job is to ensure that the decisions are taken within a time frame and the procedures are not by-passed,” he added. The PMG has cleared 151 projects entailing an investment of Rs 5.3 lakh crore. In the next three days, nodal officers of each department will be notified and the chief secretary will interact with these officers between Monday and Wednesday, said PK Jena, special secretary, PPP cell of department of planning & coordination.

“The initiative will be  paperless which is a striking point,” said Subhrakant Panda, chairman, Ficci Odisha State Council. The Cabinet secretariat will organize a training session for all the nodal officers and other officials on May 22 and 23. The online tracking will be operational from June 1. Chief Secretary J K Mohapatra will review the progress on every second and fourth Wednesday at 10.30 am without any notice, Jena added. The PMG today jointly reviewed the progress of various statutory clearances on large scale projects with investments exceeding Rs 1,000 crore with top state officials. Industry representatives were not invited for discussions because of the Model Code of Conduct imposed for elections.

So far, the Cabinet Secretariat’s PMG has reviewed the status of large investment projects in Odisha five times.

Projects that have gone under the scanner included the smelter plant of Aditya Aluminium Ltd, proposed expansion of Vedanta Aluminum’s Lanjigarh refinery, Paradeep refinery and Paradeep-Ranchi-Raipur pipeline of Indian Oil Corporation Ltd (IOCL), power plants of Lanco Babandh, Jindal India Thermal Power Ltd (JITPL) and KVK Nilachal Power and steel projects proposed by Jindal Steel & Power Ltd (JSPL), Monnet Ispat & Energy Ltd, Visa Steel and Essar Steel.