Land is becoming the major stumbling block for industrial development in almost all states in the country. With this in mind, Tamil Nadu, which has ambitious goals on the industrialisation and export fronts, is creating a land bank of 10,000 acre for industrial parks, to be developed in the next five years.

The land bank will be mostly developed in dry and barren lands, avoiding prime agricultural land. In fact, the state government has announced the constitution of a committee under the chief secretary to formulate a land policy and work out the necessary guidelines for acquisition.

According to the state?s newly unveiled industrial policy, the land bank is being developed to make available adequate supply of developed land for manufacturing and quality space for high technology industries and start-ups. There will be quality infrastructure, skill development centres, housing, business centres, restaurants, financial services, schools and hospitals.

The policy promises that equal treatment would be given to parks promoted by government agencies or private developers and special economic zones.

To get an area approved as an industrial park, the applicant should have legal possession of a minimum of 250 acre. It should be for manufacturing activities and there should be provision for at least five major manufacturing units and 20 small and medium enterprises. The important conditions are that the park should not have more than 10% wetland or double crop land and no more than 5% government land and should be 50 km away from the city limits.

Of the total land, 65% should be for the processing area and 35% for non-processing like office space warehouses, ICDs business and convention centres. Social infrastructure, like housing, schools, hospitals and entertainment centres should not occupy more than 15% of the space.

The policy document, released by chief minister M Karunanidhi, who also holds the industries portfolio, will draw guidelines to reform regulatory processes, remove procedural hurdles in business and enable the integration of existing industrial clusters with global supply chains and encourage symbiosis with SMEs in major industry clusters. It also targets building efficient and dependable industrial infrastructure and develop human resources and intellectual capital to world standards.

The mission is to create an additional two million jobs, to raise contribution to GSDP from the manufacturing sector from the present 21% to 27%.