Shillong, March 12: The Meghalaya Cabinet on Tuesday cleared the Meghalaya Industrial and Investment policy.
Informing this, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma said that the government had come up with this policy to streamline investment process so that maximum possible investment in private sector comes to the state. He also said that this policy was in line with the central government policy and the state’s objective of achieving a 10 billion dollar economy.
“In order to achieve that goal we have come out with a new industrial and investment policy and this has also been aligned with the northeast policy that has come in recently which was announced by Government of India last week,” he said.
He said in this new industrial policy there were different areas of incentives that government would give whether it is from the capital investment that will be providing to interest subsidy.
“Incentive for interest payments will be provided and at the same time they will be providing also certain components of GST the SGST reimbursement,” he informed.
Stating that it is aligned with the central policy, he said if the policy of the state government is to give about Rs 1 crore as incentive, out of that 50 lakhs comes as incentive from central government.
He further informed that the policy have been divided into priority sectors and non priority sectors and negative lists.
” The sectors like tourism food processing education IT these are important sectors for the government which will be part of the investment policy and this entire industrial policy that is there and there will be some list of negative industries which govt will not be providing incentives,” he said.
The Chief minister said,” Apart from that we also worked out the policy in such a manner that we are able to promote our local entrepreneurs also and hence some components have been provided where there will be some areas of procurement preferences being given to the local entrepreneurs and suppliers”.
“Transportation subsidy again for products being bought or raw materials being brought from within the state, he added
He further said, “We are giving incentive for people who will have construct for example water harvesting structures, water cleaning structures even solar powered structures and energy so there will be subsidy for those also “.
According to the chief minister they are looking at a very large component of employee related incentives and there will be aspects of the EPF which will be refunded to certain extent for the local domicile and then there will also be incentive for setting up of the different industrial parks also in the state.
Stating that the focus is primarily on two aspects, he said, “First aspect is to create employment and to promote the priority sectors as I mentioned which is tourism and agriculture food processing education IT so on and so forth and 2nd is also to encourage the local procurement of raw materials from within the state of Meghalaya”.
Talking about local employment in the unskilled sectors, he said once the subsidies are given it should be to the tune of 90% from the local population. wherever the specific skills are required.
He cited, “If you require an optical fiber engineer or a special cook for some you know specific kind of food that is there and if those skills are not available so we are giving some space and room where for at least two years only 25% Would be required to be to be employed locally but in in two years’ time that number has to go up to 50% at least”.
” So, these are for specialized areas of certain managerial level or certain skill sets which may not be available here but in general the for the normal unskilled section the employment has to be 90% from local from the state of Meghalaya,” he said.
He further said,”It is a very aggressive policy and it will be one of the more aggressive policies in the country I should say and this is again aligned with the states objective of achieving a $10 billion economy “.
Informing that the government has also come up with the IT and the ITES promotion policy, he said this again has been done in line with the policy to create more jobs in the IT sector and for this to be successful the government is giving an incentive where for every new job that is created an incentive of ₹3000 will be provided.
He said this will be capped at 15,000 numbers and it is on a first come first serve basis so whichever industries or companies that come in and set up BPO sectors here in the state, a flat will be given as ₹3000 for the jobs that are created.
“We are targeting and expecting that we should be able to create another 15,000 jobs through this Incentive policy for the IT and ITES sector of course we will have other incentives also which are provided in the industrial policy where the ITE and IT ES sectors can also take the overall benefit,” he said.
Meanwhile, he informed that the creation of Technology Parks Society to enable the government to professionally plan, develop, establish, promote, operate and manage the Technology Parks in the state has been approved.