Kutch, Sep 7 (KNN) The Federation of Kutch Industries Association (FOKIA) has written a letter to Minister of state (Independent charge) of Shipping, Mansukh Mandaviya for bringing structural changes for attracting entrepreneurs to Smart Industrial Port City (SIPC) at Deendayal Port, Kandla-Kutch.

In a letter, Managing Director of Fokia, Nimish Phadke made a point that the selection of land site for the SIPC is wrong, the site was submerged under five to ten feet of water at the time of the horrible calamity of 1998 cyclone at Kandla port.

The facts can be verified with local port authority and on the basis of the vetting, the site for the SIPC be shifted to better location or necessary steps be taken to prevent water ingression at the time of such calamity, he added.

He said that as per our consultation with large industries, their land requirement may be in the parcels of 200 acres and more. The total size of the SIPC is appx.650 acers and looking to the present size, it will not be able to accommodate any large industries. 

Fokia suggested to look for larger size of SIPC for the holistic industrial cluster development.

If the ministry want to continue with present SIPC size and want to target only medium and small industries, we would suggest you to design entire SIPC as per the need of the medium and small scale industries and special incentives like relief in land lease rent and concessional electrical power etc. be offered to them. We can send the details of expected incentives for the industries separately, he added.

He further pointed that the land offered at SIPC is on lease rent basis, it is not a free hold land. This is discouraging the interest of the industrial investors.

The land use policy of the DPT is not one of the best and it has got bad name due to various agitations carried out against DPT on the matter by local chamber of commerce and trade associations, he mentioned.

As per the commitment given to these bodies, the ministry and DPT are revisiting their land use policy to accommodate the concerns raised by them. In the backdrop, it would be prudent for DPT to introduce free hold land policy for the newly developed SIPC to provide potential investor hassle free experience, while dealing with land use related matters, said Phadke in a letter.

He stated “The DPT has the licence to trade and supply the electrical power. The DPT should evolve a mechanism and supply the power at cheaper rate than DISCOM to attract the industrial investors.”

“We would request the ministry to ask DPT to elaborate the preferential treatment area and prominently highlight the same to attract the investors”, said FOKIA.

The EoDB experience should be extended for running the business and making the compliances and winding up of business also, he added.

He further stated that the Internet of Things (IoT) and automation is tool to achieve manufacturing 4.0level. These two tools should be kept in mind while evolving smart port city concept to attract the latest technological manufacturing set ups.