The latest in the list is the announcement on Thursday that the Rs 22,000 crore Tata-Airbus C-295 transport aircraft manufacturing plant will now come up in Vadodara, Gujarat. (Source: Airbus)Maharashtra has lost four major projects with a total investment of around Rs 1.80 lakh crore to other states in the last three months. As a result, the state has also potentially lost out on an opportunity to generate over 1 lakh direct and indirect jobs through these projects.
The latest in the list is the announcement on Thursday that the Rs 22,000 crore Tata-Airbus C-295 transport aircraft manufacturing plant will now come up in Vadodara, Gujarat. Maharashtra Industries Minister Uday Samant, as well as Union minister Nitin Gadkari, were hopeful of bringing the project to Nagpur’s Mihan. The project was expected to create around 6,000 direct and indirect jobs in the state.
A similar big-ticket project was the Rs 1.54 lakh crore Vedanta-Foxconn project that was to come up in Maharashtra. The company was to set up a semiconductor fab unit in the state’s Talegaon industrial area for which even the location was finalised. In September, the project shifted to Gujarat’s Dholera. As per estimates, the project and other dependent small industries would have created around 1 lakh jobs in the state.
Maharashtra was one of the main contenders for the bulk drug park project, estimated to be around Rs 3,000 crore and with the potential to create around 50,000 direct and indirect jobs. Maharashtra was pushing for Roha and Murud tehsils in coastal Raigad district and had even earmarked 5,000 acres in these two tehsils. On September 1, however, the Centre extended an ‘in-principle’ approval to the proposals of Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh under the scheme for the promotion of bulk drug parks – a key initiative to support the bulk drugs manufacturing industry.
Similarly, in the last week of September, the central government turned down Maharashtra’s proposal to set up a Rs 424 crore Medical Devices Park project in Aurangabad’s Auric city, approving proposals from Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh instead. The previous Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government had approved the project in October 2020 with special incentives. The government then had estimated the creation of over 3,000 direct and indirect jobs.