The State cabinet today approved the Meghalaya Industrial and Investment Policy, Meghalaya IT/ITeS Promotion Policy, 2024 and the creation of the Meghalaya Technology Parks.
Informing this, Chief Minister Conrad Sangma said the State government is trying to streamline the investment process and to work towards ensuring that maximum investment in the private sector comes into the State aligned with the State’s objective of achieving a 10 billion dollar economy.
Sangma said that the new Meghalaya Industrial and Investment Policy has been aligned with the North East Industrial Policy that was announced by the Government of India last week.
According to him, the new industrial policy has different incentives.
“Incentives for interest payments will be provided and at the same time we will also be providing certain components of GST and SGST reimbursement,” Sangma informed.
“If the State industrial policy is to give about Rs 1 crore as incentive and if out of that, Rs 50 lakh comes as incentive from the Central government, then the net amount is what the State government will pay,” Sangma said.
He further informed that the policy has been divided into priority sectors and non-priority sectors and negative lists.
“The sectors like tourism, food processing, education, and IT are important sectors for the government which will be part of the investment policy and there will be some list of negative industries which the government will not be providing incentives,” Sangma said.
“Apart from that we also worked out the policy in such a manner that we are able to promote our local entrepreneurs also and hence some components have been provided where there will be some areas of procurement preferences being given to the local entrepreneurs and suppliers,” he added.
Sangma said that the transportation subsidy will be given for products or raw materials being brought from within the State.
“We are also giving subsidy incentives for people who construct for example water harvesting structures, water cleaning structures, even solar powered structures and energy,” he said.
According to the chief minister, there will be incentives for setting up of the different industrial parks in the State.
Stating that the focus is primarily on two aspects, he said, “The first aspect is to create employment and to promote the priority sectors which is tourism and agriculture, food processing, education, IT so on and so forth and the second aspect is also to encourage the local procurement of raw materials from within the State.”
Talking about local employment in the unskilled sectors, Sangma said that once the subsidies are given, the employment should be to the tune of 90 per cent for the local population wherever the specific skills are required.
“If those skills are not available, we will be giving some space where for at least two years only 25 per cent would be required to be to be employed locally but in two year’s time that number has to go up to 50 per cent at least,” Sangma said adding, “These are for managerial level or certain skill sets which may not be available here but in general for the normal unskilled section the employment has to be 90 per cent from the State.”
Informing that the government has also come up with the IT and the ITeS Promotion Policy, Sangma said this again has been done to create more jobs in the IT sector and for this to be successful the government is giving an incentive of Rs 3000 for every new job that is created.
He said the employment number will be capped at 15,000 and industries or companies that come in and set up BPO sectors in the State will be given Rs 3000 for the jobs that are created.
“We are expecting that we should be able to create 15,000 jobs through this incentive policy in the IT and ITeS sector. Of course we will have other incentives also which are provided in the industrial policy where the IT and ITeS sectors can also take the overall benefit,” he said.
