Tamil Nadu announces new industrial policy, targets Rs 10 trn investments

Policy aims to raise contribution of manufacturing sector to 30% of GSDP by 2030, create two million jobs.

Tamil Nadu today announced its new Industrial Policy 2021 with an aim to garner investments worth about Rs 10 trillion by 2025.

The state's Chief Secretary, Rajeev Ranjan, said the objective of the policy is to attract investments worth Rs trillion and create employment opportunities for two million by 2025.

The Policy also aims to raise the contribution of the manufacturing sector to 30 per cent of the State's economy by 2030.

Ranjan said Industrial policy 2021 aims to achieve an annual growth rate of 15 per cent in manufacturing.

Tamil Nadu also announced MSME Policy 2021, which has set a target to attract new investments worth Rs two trillion in the sector by 2025 and create additional employment opportunities for two million people.

Tamil Nadu's former Chief Secretary & Advisor to Tamil Nadu, K Sharnmugam, said manufacturing contributes 25 per cent to the State's GDP and that the sector achieved a CAGR of 13 per cent between FY15 and FY20.

"Our endeavour is to make Tamil Nadu a strong hub for global manufacturing. The State is focusing on improving infrastructure and reducing the cost of doing business by developing dedicated industrial parks," he said.

Some of these specialised areas include EV & bulk drug parks in Manalur, medical devices parks at Oragadam and Chengalpattu, mega textile parks in Dharmapuri and Virudhunagar, and defence & aerospace parks in Sriperumbudur and Sulur.

Tamil Nadu has been attracting a great deal of investments in sunrise sectors like EVs, EV cells & batteries, renewables parts. Potential exists for aerospace, pharma, petrochem and tech textiles, said N Muruganandam, Principal Secretary, Industries, Government of Tamil Nadu.

He added that Tamil Nadu has achieved a compounded annual growth rate of 13 per cent in manufacturing between 2014-15 and 2019-20 and is well-positioned to attain a target growth of 14 per cent, in line with Vision 2023.

"In the long run, Tamil Nadu sees an opportunity to not just return to its normal growth trajectory but to leverage disruption in technology for resurgence and driving growth through a robust manufacturing ecosystem. This will include a shift to digital services and leveraging R&D for disruptive industrial innovation. Hence, this Policy focuses on encouraging R&D and adoption of technology in the manufacturing sector, said in the policy document.

The approach will be to achieve inclusive and balanced regional growth, spped up industrial growth with incentives and facilitation measures, promote resilient industrial development that aligns with environmental sustainability, develop an innovation ecosystem and promote investment in technology adoption, encourage FDI & exports, implementation mechanism that delivers incentives in an objective, transparent and time bound manner among others.

Key levers and pillars of the new Industrial Policy would be structured Package, incentives for Logistics Infrastructure, incentives for Sunrise Sector, incentives for Foreign Direct Investment, incentives for Industrial Parks, incentives for Sub-Large Projects and Incentives for R&D Projects.

"High-level implementation guidelines have been provided in this Policy, and detailed operational guidelines and clarifications will be issued from time to time," says the policy document.

Palaniswami also laid the foundation stones for six industrial estates of TANSIDCO in various districts, which would generate about 13,300 jobs, and for four new industrial parks of SIPCOT at Manapparai, Maanallur, Oragadam and Dharmapuri. The state aims to attract investment of Rs 27,000 crore in automobile, electric vehicles manufacturing, food processing.