TN CM vows second green revolution, reforms to promote manufacturing sector

Chennai:

Tamil Nadu on Monday vowed to usher in second green revolution in the state besides promising to launch second generation of reforms to promote rapid growth in manufacturing sector.

Addressing the National Executive Committee Meeting of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) here, Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa said that her government has planned to take up several measures to achieve the ‘Second Green Revolution’ by increasing agricultural productivity by addressing the productivity gap and through value addition besides coming up with sector specific policies in the new industrial policy.

Unveiling her dream of making Tamil Nadu the number one state in India, she wooed the investors by urging them to be a player in the world league of automobiles, electronic hardware, agro-processing, textiles and garments, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and petrochemicals and in leather and footwear.

Quoting French poet Anatole France’s lines of ‘Existence would be intolerable if we were never to dream’, she said, “I dream of making Tamil Nadu the best state in the country. The process will be outlined in our soon to be released ‘Vision 2025’ document.”

Highlighting that industry cannot march ahead unless there is robust all round growth in primary sector, particularly agriculture, she said that the government has chalked out a new strategy for a rapid growth in primary sector to achieve 4 per cent growth in this sector.

“We will achieve this through effective dissemination and adoption of advanced technology to increase productivity of crops, farm based intervention for mixed farming and by convergence of schemes to ensure integrated farm development,” Jayalalithaa said.

Stressing the need to develop infrastructure to achieve the number one position in the state, she invited public private partnerships and said the newly constituted Infrastructure Development Board, under her leadership, will create a congenial environment for facilitating speedy implementation of critical infrastructure projects that will drive the growth of primary, secondary and tertiary sectors.

The chief minister also vowed that there will be no skilled manpower shortage in the state and the government will ensure that students from deprived sections don’t suffer from deprivation of uniforms, textbooks and shoes to geometry boxes and laptop computers.

She also tried to assure the corporate sector that the state is taking efforts on a war footing to improve the power situation in the state by making it a power surplus state again. “My government has planned to undertake a massive capacity addition of 23,140MW of power to the existing installed capacity of 10,237 MW during the next five years,” the chief minister added.