Tidco Ties Up With Foreign Floriculture Company

The Tamil Nadu government has selected floriculture as an area of priority, with Tamil Nadu Industrial Development Corporation (Tidco) joining hands with a European floriculture company to pump in Rs 400 crore in providing infrastructure support to the industry. Of the total amount, Tidco would bring in Rs 70 crore.

Floriculture industry, a major foreign exchange earner, has been suffering due to inadequate infrastructure support, Tamil Nadu Industry secretary, S Srinivasan, told Business Standard. At Bangalore and Chennai airports alone, flowers worth Rs 2.5 crore were destroyed in the last couple of months due to lack of cold storage facilities, he pointed out.

Tidco is setting up facilities with the help of the private sector to provide support to the industry, including a cold storage of 1,000 sq m capacity at Chennai airport. The infrastructure support required by the floriculture industry includes grading facility, cold storage, transport and connectivity at airports.

Srinivasan however declined to divulge the name of the European company with which Tidco is joining hands. He merely said that it would be either a Dutch or a Swedish floriculture company. He said the details of the plan were being worked out. Tamil Nadu has been following an aggressive policy on industrial sector, inviting investments from all quarters.

Major corporates already present in the state are Hindustan Motors-Mitsubishi (car), Matsushita of Japan, Mahindra-Ford India (car), Hyundai India (car), Pilkington of the UK (float glass), Saint Gobain of France (float glass), DuPont of the United States (Nylon 6) and others.

The state level incentives being offered by Tamil Nadu include investment subsidies of $28,000 to $280,000, deferment or waiver of sales tax for five to 14 years, and power tariff concessions.

Other carrots being dangled by the state are pro-active government policies, investor-friendly and transparent decision-making, sound and diversified industrial infrastructure, comfortable power situation, abundant skilled manpower, quality of life and work, harmonious industrial relations, investor incentives and highly-evolved commercial culture and institutional support.