Kerala Govt To Allow Individual Developers To Set Up Industrial Parks

The Kerala government has decided to allow individual developers to set up industrial parks in the state and will provide them with Rs 3 crore for creating infrastructure facilities like roads, electricity and water supply within such estates.

To facilitate individual developers to set up the parks and give a boost to the industrial infrastructure in the state, the government has revised its Private Industrial Estate (PIE) scheme, the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) said in a statement.

Earlier, only companies, cooperatives and consortia of Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME) units were eligible to take advantage of the PIE scheme of 2022, it said.

As per the revised scheme, individual developers having a minimum of 10 acres of land at their disposal can apply for developing industrial parks. So far, eight individual developers have been given permits to build private industrial parks in different parts of the state, and 20 applications are under process.

KSIDC said that under the revised policy, the Department of Industries and Commerce (DIC) will provide up to Rs 3 crore as grant to each developer to create infrastructure facilities like roads, electricity, water supply, sewage and effluent treatment plants and communication networks in the private industrial parks.

Two such parks will be operational this year (2023) itself and the state is expected to have at least 25 private industrial parks by the end of this financial year (2023-24). The government has set a target of having 100 private industrial parks covering an area of 1,000 acres in four years.

In order to get a developer permit, the applicant has to ensure that the land proposed for the park does not fall within the purview of the Kerala Conservation of Paddy Land and Wetland Act 2008 and also that it is not an ecologically sensitive area or come within a coastal regulation zone or plantation areas. Furthermore, red category industries, as notified by the Kerala Pollution Control Board, shall not be permitted in such parks, it added.

Applications for the permit can be made online, after which a District-Level Site Selection Committee will inspect the plot, the statement said. Following that, the committee will submit a report to the State-Level Selection Committee, which will evaluate the report and issue the developer permit. After getting the permit, the park has to be developed in two years.