Govt to invest about Rs 50k crore for developing economic zones by 2024

NEW DELHI: New Delhi: The road, railways, shipping and civil aviation ministries have prepared a detailed connectivity road map for over 200 economic zones such as food and agro zones, fishing and defence clusters, electronic, textile and pharmaceutical parks by 2024. The government will invest about Rs 50,000 crore in these economic zones in the next four years.
Sources said seven infrastructure ministries and seven others joined hands to prepare the National Master Plan for providing multi-modal connectivity to various economic zones including three big industrial areas at Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Tumakuru in Karnataka and Dadri in Uttar Pradesh.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the meeting on this on Monday. He tweeted, “Chaired a meeting to review the preparations for the National Master Plan for Providing Multi-Modal Connectivity to Various Economic Zones. This is an important endeavour, that will boost productivity, infrastructure, economic progress and opportunities for our youngsters.”

TOI has learnt that the government has identified the industries that would come up at these three big industrial areas. These include food products, textiles, electronics, automobiles, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and cold storage.
“The main objective of preparing the Master Plan is to guide departments and ministries while they are planning individual projects. This will also ensure aligning the funding of projects by ministries as per the Master Plan. The logistics department will coordinate with the respective ministries to make the plan better,” said a source.
Sources said to improve connectivity, the road transport ministry has said construction of more highways including economic corridors would cater to the needs for economic zones while railways has planned to increase cargo handling by at least 33% by 2024, which will ensure faster movement of raw and finished material and would also reduce logistics cost.