Ease of doing biz, lower costs to aid Raj's growth: Rathore at BS Samriddhi

Rathore lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision to ink free-trade agreements with different countries, and said the PM believes that India's market is its strength

Rajasthan’s journey towards becoming a ₹30 trillion economy in the next three and a half years will be guided by the twin principles of ease of doing business and lowering the cost of doing business, said Col (retd) Rajyavardhan Rathore, the state’s industry & commerce minister, in a fireside chat at the Business Standard Samriddhi event on Wednesday.

 

Rathore, who earlier launched Business Standard’s Jaipur edition in Hindi and English at the event here, said that for ease of doing business the state had announced nine policies in key sectors. These include policies on export promotion, logistics, app­arel, cluster development, One District One Product (ODOP), data centres, and a forthcoming policy on artificial intelligence. 

With the launch of the Jaipur edition, Business Standard is now published simultaneously across 14 cities in English and seven in Hindi. 

The minister, who holds five portfolios, including information technology & communications, and skill development & entrepreneurship, said that as part of its effort to reduce the cost of doing business, the state government had adopted a policy of direct land allotment instead of the previous system of auction. The fixing of price for such land, he said, was carried out transparently by a committee that determines rates based on factors like the plot’s distance from a city. 

“Ink an MoU (memorandum of understanding), go to the Riico (Rajasthan State Industrial Development & Investment Corporation) website, pick a plot, and we will allot it to you. The website has details of available plots in all the 419 Riico industrial parks,” he said. 

 

Rathore also spoke of the government’s vision to build a land bank and an IT city near Delhi, on the lines of IT cities in Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

 

He lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision to ink free-trade agreements with different countries, and said the PM believes that India’s market is its strength, while the previous government thought of it as its weakness. “I would point to the India-EFTA (European Free Trade Association) trade pact. Under the free-trade agreement, for the first time, there is a binding commitment on the European nations to not only transfer to us technology but invest $100 billion. Similarly, we have an energy treaty with the United Arab Emirates and a trade pact with Singapore. The national government has created an environment of development within India,” Rathore said.

 

On how Rajasthan is pulling investments, Rathore said in the Rising Rajasthan Summit, the state had not merely inked MoUs, but was handholding businesses as well. “We are hiring consultants so that all the file movement is not done by entrepreneurs but by the government of Rajasthan. It is literally like a door-to-door service,” he said.

 

The minister said that the state was pursuing the PM’s mantra of reform, perform, and transform to the hilt. “We are reforming, our government is performing and we are transforming Rajasthan from a ₹15 trillion economy to a ₹30 trillion economy in the next three and a half years,” he said.

 

The minister said Rajasthan would play a big role in the PM’s call for “swadeshi” and “aatmanirbharta”. He pointed out that there were as many as 56 minerals found in Rajasthan, and in some, such as zinc, the state is the largest producer. “We have plenty of land. Our industrial corridor and expressway network is good,” Rathore said, adding that Rajasthan is a goldmine of possibilities.

 

Later, the launch event was followed by two high-intensity panel discussions, attended by leading industrialists, bureaucrats and policymakers.