Commerce Minister Releases Report on Industrial Park Rating System

             The Union Minister for Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, released the report prepared by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, on Industrial Park Rating System. Speaking on this occasion, Commerce Minister said that manufacturing has emerged as one of the high growth sectors in India and it has moved 23 places up in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business (EODB-2019) and achieved rank 77 out of 190 countries. In order to ensure that India moves into the top 50 countries in Ease of Doing Business the Ministry has undertaken this exercise in studying infrastructure across states and in 3354 industrial clusters in order to assess quality of infrastructure in industrial parks.

Suresh Prabhu stated that this will be a useful tool for policy makers and investors at the click of a button. 3000 parks are on the database and the industrial parks have been rated on 4 points: internal infrastructure, external infrastructure, business services and facilities and environment, safety management.

To optimise resource utilisation and enhance the efficiency of the manufacturing sector, DIPP launched the Industrial Information System (IIS), a GIS-enabled database of industrial areas and clusters across the country in May 2017. The portal serves as a one-stop solution to the free and easy accessibility of all industrial information including availability of raw material – agriculture, horticulture, minerals, natural resources, distance from key logistic nodes, layers of terrain and urban infrastructure.

Over the last one year, State Governments and Industrial Development Corporations have actively used the portal and nominated over 200 parks for their assessment along the above parameters.

IPRS is proposed to be translated into an annual exercise covering all the parks across India. Coverage would be widened and updated to bring in deeper qualitative assessment feedback, bring in technological intervention and develop it as a tool that helps effectively for demand driven and need based interventions both by policy makers and investors.