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Glass manufacturer, Saint-Gobain, is setting up a manufacturing unit at Atchyuthapuram in Visakhapatnam (Vizag) district at a cost of Rs 2,000 crores, according to J Krishna Kishore, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board (APEDB).
He was speaking here on Saturday at a seminar on unlocking the economic potential of Andhra Pradesh by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), AP branch.
He said the state had made huge strides since 2014, when it was bifurcated, in spite of several setbacks and disadvantages it had suffered in the process of bifurcation. "At present, Saint-Gobain has a modern glass manufacturing unit at Sri Perambudur near Chennai in Tamil Nadu and the same plant will be replicated here in Visakhapatnam district, but in course of time the capacity may be hiked to exceed that of the Chennai plant," he said.
Krishna Kishore said that the state was planning to set up an electronics park on 1,000 acres in the state. "We also want to set up an MSME park in each of the 175 Assembly constituencies in the state and some of them have already started functioning," he said.
He listed the major investments in the state since 2014 such as Kia Motors manufacturing plant in Anantapur district, Foxconn unit in Sri City in Chittoor district and several others. "Two big projects are coming up in the state - the Adani data centre park entailing investment of Rs 70,000 crores in phases in Visakhapatnam, and Asia Pulp and Paper unit near Ramayapatnam port in Prakasam district entailing investment of Rs 24,500 crores. Asia Pulp unit, besides creating 4,500 direct jobs, will also benefit more than 50,000 farmers in Prakasam and other districts of AP," he said.
The AP MedTech zone, the first medical devices park in the country, in Visakhapatnam district was another project worthy of mention, he said. "We virtually started from the scratch in 2014 and since then 824 projects entailing investment of Rs 1.80 lakh crores have gone into production and several more are in the advanced stages. AP has the highest rate of converting memorandums of understanding (MoUs) signed into projects at 50 per cent," he said.
On the role of the APEDB, he said it was a statutory body created by the state government to facilitate policy formulation and also in setting up projects and attracting investment in different sectors. "We have Rs 2.47 lakh crores of committed investment in different projects. The state stands first in ease of doing business and the APEDB has bagged the first prize in the country," he added.
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