Tamil Nadu plans financial city, country specific parks

Chennai, July 13 : After attracting global automobile manufacturers to the state, Tamil Nadu is now planning a financial city, an aviation park and country-specific complexes to attract investment.

Responding to the discussions in the assembly for the demands of grants for the industries department, Deputy Chief Minister M.K. Stalin Monday said a financial city will be built near Chennai with private participation to attract insurers, banks, mutual funds and others.

In order to attract investments from aviation sector, he said the government will also set up an aero park.

The state government will also be developing country-specific industrial parks to attract investments from business units located in those countries.

According to an industries department policy note submitted by Stalin in the assembly, the government has identified certain countries as having higher potential to make investment in the state.

Orders have been issued for the development of parks for Japan, Korea, Finland, Germany and France.

Each industrial park will be spread over 100 acres and will be developed by the State Industries Promotion Corp of Tamil Nadu (Sipcot).

The policy note said the government is developing industrial parks and special economic zones (SEZ) in different parts of the state to disperse the industries.

Approval and final notification for multi product SEZ at Nanguneri in Tirunelveli district has been obtained while a similar project is being developed in Perambalur district.

Tamil Nadu as 49 notified SEZs, the third highest among Indian states.

Claiming that the government is not resorting to forcible acquisition of land, the policy note said each SEZ allots land to a number of manufacturers in the region.

The state government has also issued administrative sanction for development of new industrial parks in Madurai, Perundurai and Cheyyar by Sipcot.

The note also said the Tamil Nadu government planned more investment in infrastructure.

In the past three years, the state has signed 23 agreements in addition to sanctioning structured assistance packages for nine projects separately.

The total investment in the state through these 32 projects would be Rs.39,741 crore.

In 2008, the state government signed 12 agreements involving a total investment of Rs.24,050 crore and issued structured package sanctioning orders for seven other projects aggregating an investment of Rs.5,462 crore.