28.5.14

Chennai-Vizag Industrial Corridor

The Asian Development Bank has shown readiness to back an industrial corridor along the coast of Andhra Pradesh, giving a confidence boost to the southern state as it prepares for a new life without Telangana and Hyderabad.
ADB, headquartered in Manila, has started work on studying the feasibility of an industrial corridor from Chennai to Visakhapatnam. If the multi-lateral agency decides to fund the project directly, it will be its first such initiative in the country.
A truncated Andhra Pradesh without Telangana comes into being on June 2, with Chandrababu Naidu of the Telugu Desam Party as the chief minister as Hyderabad as the joint capital for 10 years. Naidu has said the economic development is his topmost priority and has invited domestic and foreign investors to set up businesses in his state.
The Chennai-Visakhapatnam corridor, if it materialises, will modernise ports, airports, roads and the rail network along the 800-km coastline. It will also create additional gas pipelines and power transmission lines to feed fuel to existing and new industrial clusters and Special Economic Zones in the region. The project will be developed along the lines of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor where Japan is the partner nation.
A delegation led by Teresa Kho, country director for ADB in India, recently met state government officials and made a presentation on the proposed project which could cost around Rs.20,000 crore for the infrastructure.
Confirming the development, the principal secretary of the Andhra Pradesh industries department, K.Pradeep Chandra said that ADB will be preparing the detailed project report. Once that is done, the other aspects like the roles of the state government and ADB will be decided.
The project report is expected to be submitted by October this year and the corridor is likely to be developed as a public-private partnership.

The proposed corridor was a promise made by the UPA-II government to as part of the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh into two states.
Y Harish Chandra Prasad, the chief coordinator of CoastaRayala Development Forum that lobbies to attract investment in the state, said the project could attract up to Rs.10 lakh crore of investment over several years. “It will be stimulus for the growth in this region.“

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