Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis has said infrastructure development and the ease of doing of business are keys to growth in Maharashtra, while promising to bring down the number of permissions needed to start an enterprise.
“If India has to grow at 8 per cent, my state has to grow beyond 10 per cent.
To achieve that, we have to develop infrastructure and improve the ease of doing business,” Fadnavis said at ET Awards function here late last evening.
The newly chief minister said his office is reviewing critical infrastructure projects on a daily basis and also announced a slew of initiatives to make doing business easier.
He said his government is working on a project to reduce the time taken to start a new business to around 3 months by reducing the number of permissions required from 76 at present, to 25.
Moreover, all work would be streamlined and done online to save more time, he said.
The government has also decided to appoint a dedicated facilitator to work as a relationship manager for every project entailing an investment of over Rs 100 crore.
Fadnavis said construction of houses and commercial space is very essential to deliver growth and added that his government is working on a scheme to reduce the time taken for permissions on this front from 180 days at present, to a mere 30 days.
On the infrastructure for Mumbai, which the government intends to develop as a global financial hub, Fadnavis said that work on multiple infrastructure projects is on and his government expects some progress shortly.
He said that his government has had discussions with the Union Ministry of Environment to start work on the coastal road on the metropolis' western seafront, while it it hopes to get permissions to proceed with the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link (MTHL) in two months.
Fadnavis said that the aim is to have a “circular road” including the coastal road and MTHL which will ease traffic movement to help solve the city's traffic woes. The Navi Mumbai Airport is a priority project for the government, the chief minister said, adding that land acquisition issues have been largely sorted out and the project would be fast-tracked.
Stating that businesses have been migrating to other centres like Bangalore, NCR and Hyderabad due to lack of affordable commercial space in the city, Fadnavis said that the government plan central business districts like the Bandra Kurla Complex all across the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.
The government is also serious about the rural economy and the farm sector, he said, adding that in the face of one of the worst droughts which affected over 19,000 villages, the administration is working on a plan to make Maharashtra “drought free”. However, he did not elaborate on the scheme.
