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| J&K fails to create business environ, ranked 21st in manufacturing GDP | | Assembly polls 5 month away, Omar's SKEWPY report card out | | Syed Junaid Hashmi
JAMMU, May 7: With assembly polls just 5 months away, tech-savvy Chief Minister Omar Abdullah's report card on claims of having improved business environment and succeed in enticing young to take benefits of much touted Sher-e-Kashmir Employment and Welfare Programme for the Youth (SKEWPY) is out.
The report card has been brought out not by some private enterprise but by the Planning Commission of India. Commission engaged Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India Private Limited (DTTIPL) to carry out a survey on business regulatory environment for manufacturing and come out with a state level assessment. The report, released recently, has unveiled extremely depressing state of business environment in J&K.
Report has brought to light the fact that J&K is ranked 21st in the country in terms of share of manufacturing GDP. More shockingly, J&K is contributing around 0.4 percent of India's manufacturing GDP in 2011-12. Of the J&K working population, the business sector has employed a mere 0.4 million people i.e. around 7.6 percent. It goes on and maintains that industries suffer from unscheduled power cuts. The quality of power is very poor. It is around average 8 hours of supply per day.
Report further underlines that land availability in the industrial estates is limited and it takes longer for water intensive industries to obtain a water connection. Pointing out that state government offers a range of incentives under the Industrial Policy 2004 like 100 percent subsidy on new DG sets, stamp duty exemption and interest subsidy, survey has stressed that it takes more than a year to avail incentives.
Majority of respondents were not satisfied with the experience of availing incentives on account of excessive time taken (more than a year) to avail the incentives, excessive documentation requirements and need for multiple visits to the concerned department, maintains the report. Further, the report says that power connection requires on an average 280 days corresponding to bottom 20 percentile.
Majority of respondents were not satisfied with the experience of obtaining power connection. Interactions with Industry associations and state government officials indicated that the primary reason for the delay is excessive time taken in load sanctioning due to power shortage in the state. However, the commission has recommended the state for taking effective corrective measures.
In another embarrassment to the state government, the report has maintained that manufacturing units in Jammu and Kashmir have faced difficulties in complying with the requirement to hire at least 55 percent of employees from the state. The unit holders maintain that sufficient number of skilled workers are not available in the state and hence, they have to bring people from outside.
Commission has recommended that the number of contact points in government departments should be reduced. Moreover, online application systems with facilities for tracking of application status should be implemented, whereby all forms can be submitted online and their application status can be tracked online as well. Frequency of renewals from State Pollution Control Board (SPCB) should be aligned to pollution category the units belong to. (Currently in most states, frequency of renewals is 1, 2 and 3 years for Red, Orange and Green categories, respectively). |
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