Odisha to cancel land allotment of defaulting exporters at seafood park

The Odisha government is considering taking action against the seafood exporters who have defaulted on payments towards land allotted to them for setting up  units at the proposed seafood park on the outskirts of Bhubaneswar.

About  18 sea food exporters could face cancellation for non-payment of dues.

"Only allotments made to Falcon, Magnum and B –One will not be cancelled as they have reportedly deposited their dues. We will take a decision soon on cancelling the allotments made to exporter who have not paid their dues”, said an official source.

Spread over 152 acres of land, the project has been approved under the Mega Food Park Scheme of the Union Ministry of Food Processing Industries and will comprise of 41 processing units. The project will provide plug and play infrastructure and access to common devices like cold storage, pre-processing and post-processing facilities, ice plant, packaging, polythene unit and a research & development facility.

The seafood park is being developed by the Odisha Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation (Idco) at a cost of Rs 1.34 billion. The park will be developed with Rs 50 crore grant from Ministry of Food Processing Industries and Rs 150 million from the state government.

Incidentally, the exporters have complained about Idco fixing the land price at a rather high rate of Rs 7 million per acre at the park despite the grant of Rs 650 million from centre and state. They are demanding the price of the land to be fixed at Rs 3 million.

Recently, 13 exporters of Seafood Exporters Association of India-Odisha region have decided to stay away from the project for non-fulfillment of their demands.

The seafood park had bagged investment proposals worth Rs 4.66 billion from 20 companies. The park will process 90,860 tpa of seafood and is expected to generate 7,214 jobs.

" There will be no loss of investments as more investors are in queue to commit investment at the park", added the official.