Assocham urges Telangana to build infrastructure outside Hyderabad

Apex industry body Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham) has suggested to the Telangana government to take growth outside Hyderabad by building infrastructure in other parts of the state.

Stating that Telangana has potential to achieve double-digit growth rate, it called for expediting ongoing infrastructure projects and creating new infrastructure in other parts of the state.

In a strategy paper titled "Realizing growth potential of Telangana", released here Thursday, Assocham said developing infrastructure in Telangana was essential for reducing costs of economic activities thereby leveraging public resources to access a large pool of private resources.

"The state needs to roll out a strategy for taking to take growth to other parts of Telangana as aspirations for generating more jobs and improved standard of living have mainly fuelled the formation of India's 29th state," said the strategy paper jointly released by Ravindra Sannareddy, chairman of Southern Region Development Council of Assocham, along with its national secretary general D.S. Rawat.

Assocham would be holding "Invest Telangana", in December this year to mobilize investments in the state.

The paper noted that Telangana has a revenue surplus of Rs.3,555 crore for 2014-15 but since the internal debt burden of over Rs.1.45 lakh crore of united Andhra Pradesh is to be apportioned between the two states on the basis of population ratio, Telangana would be left with a loan burden of Rs.61,000 crore.

"Employment generation is the key to development of Telangana state which has got relatively limited success in leveraging its spatial and human resource advantages for attracting investments in sunrise industries," noted the paper prepared by the ASSOCHAM Economic Research Bureau (AERB).

It recommended establishment of state of the art training centres through co-operation of the corporate sector across the state.

The paper suggested the new state to focus on improvement of power sector and initiate adequate measures to reduce quantitative and qualitative shortfall of power supply across the state.

As of June 30, Telangana state has attracted total live investments worth about Rs 3.3 lakh crore with construction and real estate (28 percent), services (other than financial - 23 percent), electricity (19 percent), irrigation (16.5 percent) and manufacturing (12 percent) sectors together accounting for almost 99 percent of these investments.

Private sector accounts for almost 59 percent of the total investments attracted by Telangana state with domestic private sector garnering lion's share of 56.4 percent and while private foreign investors account for the remaining share of about 2.4 percent, noted the strategy paper.

It pointed out that projects with about 30 percent share in total investments attracted by Telangana are facing delay in implementation owing to various reasons.

Stating that 96 laws govern business and trade, Rawat called for reviewing each law and repealing the archaic complex laws for ease of the business. He suggested to the government to study existing industrial policies of various states and countries and come out with the best world class policy.