Bring $500 million FDI, get relationship manager: Government

NEW DELHI: Soon, those looking to invest $500 million or more in the country will have a designated person who will facilitate all clearances — from the Centre to local bodies — with officials from state government and central ministries too converging on one place to address investor queries and enhance flows.
Drawing from the experience in Gujarat, the department for promotion of industry and internal trade (DPIIT) and Invest India have joined hands to put in place a new mechanism aimed at attracting investors, many of whom have in the past complained of a plethora of clearances holding up their plans, officials told TOI.

“Very soon, we will be announcing it. Within Invest India, another format in which we actually do hand-holding from investment query that anybody makes to operationalising it in the field,” DPIIT secretary Guruprasad Mohapatra said at an event on Monday.

While the issue has been discussed with commerce and industry minister Piyush Goyal, a formal approval is awaited.

Now, Invest India scouts for space
DPIIT secretary Guruprasad Mohapatra, who comes from the Gujarat cadre, is drawing upon the western state’s experience during PM Narendra Modi’s term where investment proposals were cleared quickly and facilitated by iNDEXTb, the state investment promotion body.

The Centre’s investment promotion agency Invest India is scouting for space, where officials from several ministries, including tax and environment and forest, will be present to address investment queries. State governments, too, will depute officers at the facility. The move follows several steps that have already been initiated. For instance, DPIIT has already put in place a platform that provides information on 21,000 acres of land that is almost in plug-and-play state across state industrial parks and the Delhi-Mumbai industrial corridor. Mohapatra has now asked for land available across private sector industrial parks also to be housed on the online platform so that investors can decide the location. Invest India, which already facilitates global investors, now intends to provide “relationship managers” to all investors looking to invest $500 million or more in the country.