Telangana seeks special fund allocation for Pharma City, NIMZ

Telangana's Industry and Information Technology Minister K.T. Rama Rao on Wednesday urged the Centre to allocate special funds for various projects in the state in the upcoming Union Budget 2021-22.

In a letter to Union Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal, he requested special funds for projects such as Hyderabad Pharma City, the National Industrial Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ), Zaheerabad, the National Design Centre (NDC), and setting up of Industrial Corridor in Telangana.

He thanked the Commerce Ministry for including Hyderabad-Warangal and Hyderabad-Nagpur industrial corridors by the NICDIT and for considering funding the initial two nodes for the Hyderabad Pharma City (HPC) and NIMZ, Zaheerabad.

The estimated project cost for taking infrastructure development in these two nodes is about Rs 3,000 and Rs 2,000 crore respectively.

Stating that the state government is keen to take up the development of these two projects on a fast-track basis, he requested Goyal to allocate funds to the extent of at least 50 per cent of the project cost in the budget estimates for 2021-22.

KTR, as the minister is popularly known, wrote that the state government is developing HPC as the world's largest integrated pharma park to promote domestic manufacturing of pharmaceuticals in line with the 'Make in India' and 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat' initiatives of the Centre and to consolidate the leadership position of India in the pharmaceutical sector.

After a detailed evaluation, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT), under the Commerce and Industry Ministry, has accorded the status of National Investment and Manufacturing Zone for this project and in multiple meetings, recognised the importance of this project to make India self-reliant in the pharmaceutical sector.

"The project has received an overwhelming response from both domestic and global companies to set-up manufacturing units. Overall investment potential of the project is estimated to be around Rs 64,000 crore with employment generation of 5.6 lakh jobs (direct and indirect)," KTR said.

"We have sought funding to the tune of Rs 4,922 crore from the Government of India towards the development of external and internal infrastructure development as per the NIMZ guidelines. Given the national importance of the project, I would like to request you to kindly consider a budget provision to the tune of Rs 870 crore in the Budget for the financial year 2021-22 to support the development of Hyderabad Pharma City," he said.

NIMZ, Zaheerabad was given final approval by the Ministry of Commerce in January 2016. It was requested to initially release an amount of Rs 500 crore for Phase 1 development towards external and internal infrastructure out of the total project cost of Rs 9,500 crore.

In another letter, KTR requested budget allocations for the National Design Centre (NDC) and stated that Hyderabad was proposed as the preferred location for setting up of the first NDC by DPIIT. He also mentioned that his team is working closely with the DPIIT to understand their vision of the Centre and have already submitted a Detailed Project Report with inputs from all NIDs.

"We are very keen to develop this unique institution in Hyderabad and have also identified 30 acres of prime land in University of Hyderabad campus, adjacent to National Institute of Animal Biotechnology (NIAB) in Gopanpally. This land will be offered free of cost by the state. Certain clarifications were sought by DPIIT which have also been answered by us," he said.

KTR requested a budget allocation of Rs 200 crore towards the initial capex in the budget of FY 2021-22 which will enable the government to start the developmental activities immediately.