Punjab plans CFCs for 20 industrial clusters

Punjab government has plans to set up common facility centres for 20 industrial clusters in the state as part of its endeavour to modernise especially micro and small sector enterprises.
The CFCs have been proposed for industrial clusters including oil expeller and parts, wire drawing, tractor parts, bicycle and parts, sheet metals, hand tools in Ludhiana, metal cluster, advanced machinery cluster, IT in Mohali, auto parts, hand tools, sports in Jalandhar, an official said here.
"We have planned 20 CFCs for different industry clusters in the state for the MSME sector," Punjab Director of Industries and Commerce D P S Kharbanda said today.

CFCs will be equipped with testing labs, modern machinery, marketing centres and other supportive capacity as per the requirement of industries.
Under the cluster development scheme, the Centre provides maximum amount of Rs 15 crore for setting up CFCs of which 90 per cent borne by Centre and state governments and 10 per cent by industry, he said.
The state government may also provide land for the setting up of the CFCs, he further informed.

The Punjab government has also roped in an expert from Andhra Pradesh who will highlight the benefits of cluster development and common facility centres to the local industry here. Andhra Pradesh is known for the development of industry clusters.

Besides, the Punjab government has also decided to deploy special officers for the 11 industrial sectors including food processing, health care, repair and maintenance in defence, machine tools, light engineering to address any issue or concerns of the new investors.
"We are moving ahead with a focused approach on certain industrial sectors in order to attract new investments and implementation of the new projects in the state," Kharbanda further said.
Punjab has already signed MoU with investments proposals worth Rs 47,000 crore in the past few months in different industry verticals, official said.
"After signing the MoUs, it is essential to ensure that investments do take place in the state. We are regularly following up and holding a weekly review of the new investment proposals," an official said.

Besides offering power at the rate of Rs 5 per unit, Punjab is also offering investment subsidy by way of reimbursement of net state goods and service tax (SGST), exemption from electricity duty, stamp duty and property tax, change of land use charges depending upon size of investments and industry verticals.