New policy to boost industrialisation in Punjab: Min

Punjab Industry and Commerce Minister Sunder Sham Arora today said the implementation of new industrial policy from next month will give a boost to industries in the state.

Terming the new policy as "pro-industry", he said it would give one-time settlement opportunity to sick industries to restart their ventures as the new policy will be launched after enormous improvements.

Arora said that Captain Amarinder Singh-led Punjab government had notified the Industrial Policy 2017 to fulfil its promises made with the people of the state.

Regarding the pending cases of VAT refund, Arora said the state government will refund the entire amount up to December 2018 and the fund of Rs 300 crore will be released after every two months.

Reiterating his government's commitment with regard to industrial development in the state, Arora apprised that total 155 MoUs have been signed with investment intent of Rs 47,000 crore with an expected employment generation of approximately 77,000 during the investor outreach activities carried out in the past one year.

He said that immense possibilities of industrial development are available in the state and the new policy while aiming to rebuild the industrial institutions will provide an overall framework for the state's sustainable industrial development.

He said that in the new policy, many financial and non-financial concessions have been provided and all the industrial estates have been transferred to the PSIEC as a single nodal agency.

He said the state government has introduced two part electricity tariff i.e. fixed and variable tariff and provided power at a variable tariff of Rs 5 per kilo volt ampere hours (KVAH) for five years with no increase in the existing fixed electricity tariff.

He said that 23 clusters have been identified for setting up of Common Facility Centres with the project cost of Rs 15 crore each under the Micro and Small Enterprises Cluster Development Programme (MSE-CDP) besides setting up of MSME facilitation councils at district levels.

He said that Rs 1,440 crore has already been released to Powercom to provide power at Rs 5 per unit to the industries.