Odisha’s minerals still biggest investment draw

| | BHUBANESWAR
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Odisha’s minerals still biggest investment draw

Thursday, 15 November 2018 | SANJEEV KUMAR PATRO | BHUBANESWAR

When Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik ebulliently announced of State receiving investment intentions worth Rs 4.19 lakh crore in the Make in Odisha investment summit-2, which is double of Rs 2.03 lakh crore worth intentions in Make in Odisha 1.0, the fact-checker here is Odisha had received investment intentions, not oral proposals, worth a whopping Rs 3.21 lakh crore in a single year of 2011, even without organising such a mega conclave.

Moreover, the big line number of Rs 4.19 lakh crore investment is stretched over 3-5 years time-frame.

The big picture that emerges post Make in Odisha 2.0 is the tagline of Odisha being a leading metallurgical State in country still continues, which means endowment of natural resources of Odisha is still the biggest investment draw for the State.

Though tune of diversifying investment portfolio is being played out, the Make in Odisha 2.0 statistics shows the investment commitments to the State from mineral and metal sector cornered a whopping 47 per cent of total investment intentions made for the coming 3-5 years time frame.

But the big shocker is Odisha has failed to open an investment account in electrical equipment sector that is dependent on metallurgical industries like steel and aluminium for raw materials.

The significance is electrical equipment industry has cornered the largest industrial investments nationally since 2015.

More significant is job creation potential of electrical equipment sector is around 40,000 per investment of around Rs 33,000 crore vis-a-vis job potential of around 66,000 only per lakh investment in metallurgical sector.

However, the big emerging story for Odisha is now it is smarting up to emerge as a petrochemical hub in the country after Gujarat, thanks to the Indian Oil’s Paradip Oil Refinery.

The Make in Odisha 2.0 statistics reveal that petrochemicals sector in the State has cornered a whopping 25 per cent of the total investment intentions made out.

But an important indicator here is despite Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) being a big player in petrochemical business, Mukesh Ambani has not rolled out any investment plan for petrochemicals in Odisha.  The good news, however, here is it’s a better job creator than metallurgical sector. Studies show petrochemical industries churning around 80,000 jobs per lakh investment.

But the most glaring missing part of the State’s mega investment conclave is Odisha has failed to attract significant investments in downstreams that are dependent on petrochemical industries for raw material.

Odisha has not received any investments in growing sectors like automotive, agriculture, medicine, infrastructure and electronics.

And job potential of the sectors is quite high vis-à-vis metallurgical and petrochemical with even one-third of the investments.

Another big take away from the mega conclave is still the big chunk of investors in Odisha are Central PSUs.

Make in Odisha reveals how Central PSUs like SAIL, Nalco, MCL etc have announced investment via expansions worth Rs 1.38 lakh crore or around 33 per cent of Rs 4.19 lakh crore intentions made, and if Haldia Petrochem (a JV between WB Government, IOC, Tata and Chatterjee Group) investments included then the total pie share will touch 50 per cent.

The bottom line is drums can wait as Industry Department has to work out some hard lessons it learnt in Make in Odisha 2018.

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