Aurangabad: The local industry representatives have said that the five-year Maharashtra industrial policy will be significant in transforming the industrial scenario in Marathwada. However, they lamented the issues which the policy failed to address.Mukund Kulkarni, industry expert and former president of the Chamber Of Marathwada Industries & Agricutural (CMIA), termed the policy a ‘good attempt’ at providing special incentives to ‘industrially underdeveloped’ areas of Marathwada, Vidarbha, Dhule and Sindhudurg. The policy provides 80% fiscal incentive to MSMEs in these areas against the 60% allocated for D+ talukas. To encourage investors to move to these areas, companies with 300 direct employees will be considered as large-scale industries in these areas. “This will come as a boost to the MIDC (Aurangabad), Mihaan (Nagpur) and Amrawati industrial areas,” said Kulkarni.Kulkarni, however, says that apart from the incentives, these areas also need due marketing. He pushed for the constitution of the Marathwada Vidarbha Industrial Council to look into the widespread marketing of these regions.Under the policy, the fixed capital limit to qualify as a MSME has been increased to Rs50 crore, 20% land priority in MIDC has been given to MSMEs, including reservation for SC/ST and women. Cluster development is also stressed upon.According to Harsh Vardhan Jajoo, the CII Marathwada Zonal Council chairman, the state government has kept MSMEs as the focus of the policy. “Aurangabad is a vibrant platform for employment in the intensive MSME sector. The entrepreneurs here want to generate employment. The policy would strengthen them in furthering their business with a lesser cost involved in the setting up and operations,” said Jajoo.However, Jajoo seemed concerned about the increase in power tariff in Maharashtra. “The hike in tariff can become a spoiler for the growth of businesses. The government should address this long-term issue and also work on insulating industries from mob attacks,” he said.The Marathwada Association of Small Scale Industries (Massia) President Kishor Rathi said that the provision of flatted galas for micro-industries, the earmarking of land for the establishment of health facilities in MIDC, continuation of the Critical Industrial Infrastructure Fund (CIIF) with an enhanced corpus of Rs1000 crore and the increase of the fixed capital limit will be significant for MSMEs.Rathi stressed on the need for a separate document with modalities about how the implementation will be done. He also sought a clarification on the exemption on stamp duty for applications filed between October 2018 and March 31, 2019.“The government should not deprive export businesses working outside the purview of SGST and GST from the subsidy benefits. The condition of minimum 50% CSR contribution from incentives needs to be justified, otherwise businesses will not be interested in a 10% incentive,” said Rathi.

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