Amaravathi, Mar 10 (KNN) The Andhra Pradesh Government, in the state budget, has made several announcements to boost the MSME sector along with an allocation of Rs 200 crore for the sector. It has announced establishing a dedicated MSME corporation, MSME parks with plug-and-play facilities.

In the MSME sector, 26,368 units have been established with investment of Rs.11,779 crore, providing employment to 3.09 lakh persons.

“To further promote MSME, the Government will be establishing a dedicated MSME corporation. MSME parks with plug-and-play facilities are also planned in 175 assembly constituencies in a phased manner. An allocation of Rs.200 crore is proposed for MSME sector,” the state budget proposes.

Andhra Pradesh State budget has been overall escalated by 22% in 2018-19 (Rs 1,91,063.61 crores) than 2017-18 (Rs 1,56,999.40) which was presented on Thursday by the Minister for Finance, Government of AP, Yanamala Rama Krishnudu.

While presenting the budget he announced the allocations for different sectors like Industries, IT, Energy and Infrastructure development as follows.

For the Industries and Commerce Department an amount of Rs.3,075 crore has been proposed as against Rs. 2,086 crore in 2017-18, an increase of 47%, to the Industries and Commerce department.

The Minister said, “Andhra Pradesh has been attracting investments across sectors such as automobile, food processing, textiles, marine products, and cement.”

In the recently concluded partnership Summit 2018, the Government signed another 734 MoUs with investment potential of Rs. 4.39 lakh crore and employment potential of 11 lakh.

Government is tracking projects through an online investment tracker, which is open for public viewing, the Finance Minister pointed.

Krishnudu said, “Andhra Pradesh is ranked no.1 in the country on Ease of Doing business as per the 2016 assessment of States conducted by DIPP and World Bank.”

Through the Single Desk portal, over 24,000 approvals have been provided to setup industry within the State. Since June 2014, Government related Rs. 3061 crore of industrial incentives against 16,792 claims.

The AP Public Service delivery Guarantee Act 2017 has also been enacted where timelines have been stipulated for delivery of public services. Currently, 74 services across 22 departments are covered under the Act.

Further, the state government is also implementing two large industrial corridor projects Visakhapatnam-Chennai Industrial Corridor (VCIC) and Chennai-Bangalore Industrial Corridor (CBIC). Out of the 4 nodes under VCIC, master planning of 2 nodes- Visakhapatnam of Krishnapatnam node is being taken up. The conceptual master plan has been approved.

“I propose an amount of Rs.3,075 crore as against Rs. 2,086 in 2017-18, an increase of 47%, to the Industries and Commerce department,” he said.

For the IT sector, he said, “The Government has been successful in receiving final approval for three Electronic Manufacturing Clusters to promote electronics manufacturing in a big way and it is expected to generate nearly 2 lakh employment opportunities.

“In Order to give a fillip to the Information Technology sector in our state, I propose an allocation of Rs.100 crores to provide incentives to the start-up business in this sector,” he said.

The Minister also proposed an allocation of Rs.1,007 crore to ITE& C department from existing allocation of Rs.364 crore, nearly a threefold increase. (KNN/ManneSR)