Chennai Bengaluru Industrial Corridor gains momentum

The Karnataka government is fast-tracking work on the Chennai Bengaluru Industrial Corridor (CBIC) with a focus on automobile and defence projects.

In an interaction with DH, Department of IT, BT & S&T and Industries & Commerce Principal Secretary Gaurav Gupta said the project is on track towards implementation with the signing of Shareholder's Agreement (SHA) and State Support Agreement (SSA) in July.

"The state government signed and registered a special purpose vehicle (SPV) with the central government in July 2018 for the execution of the project and the node. The first meeting of the SPV will be held by this month-end," he said.

Gupta said the CBIC, a 560 km long corridor in the line of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor, is spread across Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, covering also metro cities of Chennai and Bengaluru.

"The project will have five large-scale industrial corridors to further strengthen manufacturing. Karnataka will have only one node linking Tumakuru," he said.

The Karnataka government signed the agreement with the National Industrial Corridor Development and Implementation Trust (NICDIT) for developing the industrial corridors in the country. The central government formed NICDIT in 2016 under the administrative control of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion.

Tumakuru node

Gupta said the master planning for the Tumkur Industrial Node is being taken up through M/s Jacobs Consultants. "Further action would be taken up by the SPV based on their recommendations in next three months.

"We are happy to find that the corridor will have more automotive and defence companies. Already we have Scania, Volvo and Honda running their plants. Mahindra Aerospace also began their production facility here. Lot more OEM suppliers also will come and set up their facilities on this corridor," he said.

Tumakuru is also declared as the National Investment and Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ), Tumkur Machine Tool Park, Tumakuru Smart City and Japanese Industrial Township is also located there. "Already Japanese companies have begun operation from there and lot more them are in the pipeline," said a Jetro official.

The corridor when completed will attract an investment of $181 billion and generate employment for 22 million skilled workers over the next two decades.

The central government is planning aggressively to raise the contribution of manufacturing to the GDP from the current 15% to 25% by 2022.