Vijayawada: The state of Andhra Pradesh is eagerly waiting to invite the proposed Coastal Employment Zone (CEZ) in the year 2017, as the NITI Aayog vice–chairman Arvind Panagariya has assured a SEZ for AP, during his visit in the month of November. In fact, AP itself can have two CEZs (Ganga-varam-Visakhapatnam node and Krishnapatnam node), according to him, and NITI Aayog authorities have already indicated to the state about their field visit to the ports before taking a final decision. In Mr Panagariya’s view, the Central government should come up with an incentive package, which should be employment-based and also some financial package to initiate CEZ projects, which even the Chief Minister has also been kept telling. Now, the people of the state are waiting for a positive note in 2017 about CEZ in AP.
The NITI Aayog’s idea is to start with a small number of CEZs and make them effective. With this very different concept, the NITI Aayog wants the CEZs to be vehicles for creating a large number of jobs, Mr Panagariya said, during his visit to AP. While underscoring the importance of creating employment, he then said many CEZs were not at all good. For creation of employment and to achieve success, CEZs’ necessity was there, Mr Panagariya then stated and added that the idea was to provide the right ecosystem. However, the question being raised by the senior officers of planning department is as to what extent the platform was ready in AP to create the right ecosystem. “When there are funding issues and financial problems, that too linked with the Union government, a series of meetings and workouts should be there between the state planning department and NITI Aayog officials,” Dr L.S.N. Prasad, retired Professor of Eco-nomics felt and questioned the administration as to why it was so passive on such important issues.
“For sure, 2017 is a good indication for AP, but to get CEZ, we need to fulfill several formalities,” observed Dr Abbaraju Raja-sekhar, Professor of Eco-nomics, who looks after planning issues. Asked about the prospects of CEZs when Special Eco-nomic Zones have not yielded the desired results, Dr Rajasekhar said that SEZs’ design was totally different. SEZ’s have land issues and real-estate ventures. But the CEZ concept is different in which employment generation and wealth creation are the issues.
NITI Aayog seeks state report on agri sector:
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu wants to collaborate to develop a new primary sector strategy to change the face of agriculture and allied sector. The NITI Aayog authorities have sought details about the CM’s strategy and top bureaucrats of the state government are busy finalising the development draft for the same, according to a senior officer from the finance department.
To convert the crisis faced by the primary sector in Andhra Pradesh into an opportunity, the state government has designed the strategy in partnership with International Crops Research Institute (Icrisat). As part of this strategy, the stress will be on increasing productivity of the primary sector, mitigating the impact of drought through water conservation and micro-irrigation, post-harvest management to reduce the wastage, and establishment of processing, value-addition capacity and supply chain of the identified crops.
In fact, the primary sector strategy document is a part of the proposed Vision- 2029 of Andhra Pradesh. The overall goal of this collaboration betw-een the government of Andhra Pradesh and Icrisat is to enable the state become one of the top three performing states in the country by 2022. “Unfortunately, the state has not witnessed anticipated agricultural growth as measures taken were on paper and not in reality,” a senior official from the agricultural department said.
“If at least 25 per cent of the specific objectives of the collaboration is met this time, the rural youth even won’t think of turning to CEZs,” he said. In fact, the NITI Aayog has reportedly sought a status report, which is a kind of progress card on this subject, sources said, and added that this is going to be a key parameter in finalising the CEZ for Andhra Pradesh.
