The Centre has given its nod to create 12 new industrial smart city across the country with outlay of Rs 28,602 crore. The introduction of this programme falls under the standards set the government trying to increase the domestic content and production in India. The details the minister gave out were that there will be two of such cities in Andhra Pradesh and one in Bihar. The project can be seen as complementary to the government’s superordinate goal of establishing ‘plug and play industrial parks’ in or near 100 cities set in the Union Budget as a way of enhancing manufacturing capacity through partnerships with states and private sector entities.
These new smart cities are to be connected through an industrial corridor network, to be planned on the PM GatiShakti lines like the Golden Quadrilateral. They expect the job opportunity to be up to 10 lakh direct and up to 30 lakh indirect and the investment to be around Rs 1 lakh crore. 5 lakh crore. The cities will have properties that will create suitable structures in the region for modern industry solutions by allowing ‘plug-n-play and ‘walk-to-work. ’
The Cabinet also extended the Agri Infrastructure Fund which was introduced two years ago with having a corpus of £ 100 billion. Component A of the PM Kusum scheme will now have integrated secondary processing and support as a part of the expanded fund; provisions for credit guarantee will help farmers to further process their produce.
In addition, the Cabinet cleared Rs 4,136 crore of equity for hydro-electric projects of NE region which they want to develop the hydro power capacity of 62,000 MW under Act East policy. This support is expected to causes improvements in regional development and standards of living of the inhabitants.
