The Hindu Business Line : Jairam Ramesh vows to expedite AP's pending projects

THE Union Minister of State for Commerce, Mr Jairam Ramesh, said he would expedite the major industrial cluster projects of Andhra Pradesh now pending before the Union Government.

According to him, the areas that should be focussed include handlooms, textiles, handicrafts, leather, marine products, spices, horticulture, coir, food processing and agri products.

In a bid to provide domestic orientation to exports, the Union Minister held a review meeting with the State Government officials on various issues pertaining to exports here on Saturday.

Addressing newspersons immediately after the review meet, Mr Jairam Ramesh said the new orientation to exports was to ensure that the trade promotes employment, helps agriculture sector, enables growth of smaller towns and creates value addition to natural resources.

"A good number of projects of industrial clusters proposed by the State are still pending with the Centre. I will pursue for an expeditious clearance for these projects.

Further, the State is lagging behind in aggressively utilising the ASIDE (Assistance to State for Infrastructure Development for Exports) funds with a corpus of Rs 500-crore. I have asked the State officials to come forward in aggressively using these funds," the Union Minister said.

The ASIDE funds are meant for development of infrastructure such as link roads, water supply, power transmission and affluent management.

Of the total exports of $95 billion during 2005-06, AP accounts for $5 billion. Even if the population share of the State at 6 per cent of the country's total population was considered, the State's exports are not commensurate.

Further, the bulk of AP's exports of $5 billion come from IT and IT enabled services.

While the State had applied for seven industrial clusters, the Union Government cleared only two of them — Pharmaceutical Cluster in Hyderabad and Automotive Components Cluster in Vijayawada, involving a Central assistance of Rs 92 crore.

The five projects that are still pending include Marine Foods Cluster in Bhimavaram, Power Looms Cluster at Sirisilla, Leather Industrial Cluster in Hyderabad/Nalgonda, Precision Engineering Cluster in Rangareddy and Coir Industrial Cluster in the Coastal Andhra, which needed a Central assistance of around Rs 180 crore, the Minister said.

Two other projects that are pending with other Central agencies include Chilli Processing Plant at Guntur pending with Spices Board and Shrimp Testing Laboratory at Vizag pending with the Marine Products Export Development Authority (MPEDA).

Further, the Union Minister said the existing corpus of the Price Stabilisation Fund at Rs 500 crore for helping the small farmers was not sufficient since it could offer an assistance of only Rs 500 per farmer.

He said his Ministry would consider enhancing the corpus of the fund significantly so that each small farmer could be offered an assistance of at least Rs 5,000 during price falls.