Rs 386 Crore Fdi Proposals Cleared For Orissa

Six foreign direct investment proposals worth Rs 386.79 crore were approved for Orissa in the first seven months of the current financial year, state industry minister Niranjan Patnaik announced this in the Assembly here.

Giving a breakup, Patnaik said Rs 330 crore was for the proposed 2.25-million-tonne steel project of Mesco-Kalinga Steel Ltd at Daitary. Mannesmann Demag of Germany was the foreign collaborator for the project, he said.

Among the other proposals are a Rs 50 crore diamond exploration project of Melbourne-based Ashton Mining, and a Rs 6.30 crore iron ore mining project of UK-based RTZ in collaboration with Orissa Mining Corporation. Besides, projects pertaining to marketing of fish and manufacture of metalised plastic film capacitor and radiometric measuring instruments are in the pipeline.

The industry minister pointed out that during the visit of a high-level business delegation headed by Chief Minister J B Patnaik to Israel last year, 17 memorandums of understanding had been signed with various firms of Israel, mainly for transfer of agriculture technology. Eight MoUs pertaining to infrastructure projects had been concluded during the Chief Minister's recent trip to South East Asia with another business delegation. Itochu and Mitsubishi of Japan, Bang Pakong of Thailand and International Seaports Ltd of Singapore have paid visits to the state in search of investment opportunities. These firms have shown interest in acquaculture, food processing, auto components, petro-chemicals, refineries, electronics, iron and steel infrastructure projects.