Local industries mull shifting base to Jammu & Kashmir

Tribune News Service

Neeraj Bagga

Amritsar, November 7

After the extension of tax holiday and other rebates to industries under the New Central Sector Scheme for Industrial Development of the UT of Jammu and Kashmir, several local industrialists are moving there while many are contemplating to shift base.

A local resident Pankaj Mehra, director, Mehra Wax Products Private Limited, said over a month ago the construction of the new plant in the industrial area of Ghati near Kathua in Jammu region commenced. He said they were not immediately winding up their local unit which has been manufacturing wax rolls, used to strengthen different types of yarn, since 1977. It supplies about 1,000 metric tonnes of wax rolls across the country, which are sold to yarn manufacturing units in Ludhiana, Bathinda, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and MP. He said gradually they would shift the machinery. “Within a year after applying online for 9,000 square yards of land, actual construction work commenced,” he said.

Mehra got the land at Rs 600 per square yard which is unimaginable in this city. There will be no GST for 10 years, 30 per cent refund on capital subsidy, power supply at Rs 4 per unit and many other financial benefits. He said many other units in different sectors were moving to Kathua where no house on rent is available at this time.

Piara Lal Seth, president of the Punjab Pradesh Beopar Mandal (PPBM), said despite repeated requests to successive governments to create a land bank for the industrialists to provide them site at moderate rates besides minimum power tariff and incentives to border areas, nothing was done.

He said the Union government was providing four types of stimulus, namely, capital investment incentive, capital interest subvention, goods and services tax linked incentive and working capital interest subvention to industries in Jammu and Kashmir. Though the government had fixed the goal to attract capital investments in the hill state at Rs 28,400 crore up to 2037, it was likely to meet the target soon, Seth added.

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