Chennai: Aimed at making Chennai as one of the top five global auto clusters, the Tamil Nadu government on Friday unveiled the first of its kind automobile policy, an industrial policy and second volume of Tamil Nadu Vision 2023. Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa also launched another policy for the biotechnology sector.
Chennai is considered the Detroit of Asia for having a number of manufacturing facilities by many auto firms.
"Recognising the importance of automobile and auto- components sector to State, my government has brought out a separate Tamil Nadu Automobile and Autocomponent Policy 2014," she said at a function to mark the formal launch of the policies and Tamil Nadu Vision 2023 document second phase.
"This automobile policy will focus on future development and consolidation of the automobile and components industry, where Tamil Nadu enjoys a comparative advantage. It aims to generate five lakh jobs and make Chennai as one of the World's top five auto clusters," she said. On industrial and biotechnology policies, she said the purpose was to further strengthen the state's competitiveness.
"I had recognised the need to focus on sunrise sectors like biotechnology, aerospace and nanotechnology," she said.
"This industrial policy has innovative features with a focus on creating a business friendly environment with world class infrastructure and to boost employment and skill levels obtaining in the State," she said.
Recalling that 17 MoUs were signed attracting investments of Rs 26,000 crore in 2012 when the Vision 2023 document was released, Jayalalithaa said: "Today 16 more MoUs are signed for industries with a total investment of Rs 5,081 crore offering employment to 1.62 lakh persons".
"With this, the total investment envisaged in the 33 MOUs signed so far by my Government in its present tenure is Rs 31,706 crore with an employment potential of 1.62 lakh"..
Referring to Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy report, Jayalalithaa said Tamil Nadu achieved 18.2 per cent growth in investments higher than Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karanataka.
"..investments attracted by Tamil Nadu between June 2011 and January 2014 is Rs 1.46 lakh crore," she said.
On the occasion, 16 MoUs between State government and multi-national companies were signed in the presence of Jayalalithaa that attract investment of Rs 5,081 crore. This is the second major initiative unfolded by the state government after AIADMK returned to power.
The government had released the Vision-2023 document in March 2012, setting a target of luring investments to the tune of Rs 15 lakh crore. Korean-auto maker Hyundai, US Car maker Ford, Japanese auto major Nissan in a joint venture with France-based Renault have set up manufacturing facilities near Chennai.
German car maker BMW, Mercedes Benz, commercial vehicle maker Daimler also have set up similar production plants near Chennai. She said the greatest challenge before the Government was to steer the economic growth through 'highly volatile' and 'uncertain' global economic scenario prevailing now and the period of domestic slowdown.
Observing that Tamil Nadu had achieved growth rate of 11.45 per cent in 2004-05 and 13.96 per cent in 2005-06, she said, "The growth then fell to 6.13 per cent in 2007-08 and 5.45 per cent in 2008-09.".
"The growth in Tamil Nadu has rebounded in 2013-14 and is expected to be 6.13 per cent as against 4.14 per cent in 2012-13.I have every confidence that I can return Tamil Nadu to double digit growth", she said.
On the power sector, she said the State power utilities were reeling under a "huge debt" burden of over Rs 40,000 crore when the government assumed office in 2011 and later the government had allocated 'substantial' resources to establish more power projects and increase efficiency in transmission and distribution.
"Ongoing projects have been fast tracked and generation capacity of more than 2500MW have been added to the grid. Procurment action has commenced for projects with a total capacity of 3,300MW. More capacity addition are also planned", she said.
"Together all these efforts will go a long way in mitigating the demand-supply gap in the power sector", she said.
