The government today announced setting up of a National Industrial Corridor Authority (NICA) with an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore to coordinate the development of all the industrial corridors.
To boost manufacturing, the government has proposed several corridors including Amritsar Kolkata Industrial Corridor, Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor, Bengaluru Mumbai Economic Corridor and Vizag-Chennai corridor.
"A National Industrial Corridor Authority, with its headquarters in Pune, is being set up to coordinate the development of the industrial corridors, with smart cities linked to transport connectivity, which will be the cornerstone of the strategy to drive India's growth in manufacturing and urbanisation," Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said while presenting the Budget 2014-15.
The Minister has provided an initial corpus of Rs 100 crore for this purpose.
He said the Amritsar Kolkata Industrial master planning would be completed expeditiously for the establishment of industrial smart cities in seven states - Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.
The master planning of three new smart cities in the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor region - Ponneri in Tamil Nadu, Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Tumkur in Karnataka - will also be completed, he added.
"The perspective plan for the Bengaluru Mumbai Economic corridor and Vizag-Chennai corridor would be completed with the provision for 20 new industrial clusters," he said.
The government's ambitious USD 90 billion Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project is under implementation. The project is aimed at creating mega industrial infrastructure along the Delhi-Mumbai Rail Freight Corridor.
Japan is giving financial and technical aid for the project, which is developed on either side of a 1,483-km stretch running across seven states.
Further, the Minister added that Kakinada, its adjoining areas and the port will be developed as the key drivers of economic growth in the region with a special focus on hardware manufacturing.
