Each district in Odisha will have at least one new MSME park

Hemant Sharma, additional chief secretary, Odisha tells Pushpita Dey over phone on how the state is balancing growth and environment, attracting industries among other things. Edited excerpts

- Pushpita Dey

Following Utkarsh Odisha 2025, how will Odisha fast-track investment clearances and ensure timely project groundings?

Post-Utkarsh Odisha we have adopted a three-point strategy. First, we ensure that those industries which are partially in possession of land, or which are expansion projects, can be grounded early. So, starting from April, we have started grounding the projects—laying foundation stones and commencing work. In April itself, we started work on 14 projects.

For instance, we have given Nestle 80 acres of land. Similarly, Nestle vendors, who provide packaging material or raw material to Nestle, have been accommodated in about 20 acres close by. We have scheduled the groundbreaking for 17 units, including one very large investment by NINL [Neelachal Ispat Nigam].

The second point of our strategy is that there were a large number of new investors who attended [Utkarsh Odisha] for the first time. Now for these people, we are trying to reestablish contact with them. Just because they came to Utkarsh Odisha and expressed interest does not mean that they will start operations immediately.

So we are trying to bring them back to Odisha, show them land, set up meetings with our skills-development institutions to give them that confidence that they will be able to have skilled workers, show them existing industrial estates and enable meetings with our departments in let's say pollution control board, building plan approval, factories and boilers...