Hyderabad: The Telangana State Industrial Project Approval and Self-Certification System (TSiPASS), the State government’s super-quick single-window clearance system for industrial clearances, has turned out to be quite the doctor’s prescription for a healthy investment flow into the State, having clocked Rs 2.24 lakh crore in the past six years. Not surprisingly, the Information Technology sector takes the pride of place in attracting investments to the State, with the realty sector, playing a complementary role in terms of providing office space, keeping pace with the IT growth.
The two sectors account for about Rs 56,900 crore of the total investments that have flowed into the State till October end. Interestingly, the solar and renewable energy sector is in the second position followed by the pharmaceuticals and chemicals industry.
In all, about 13,804 companies have invested about Rs 2.24 lakh crore in Telangana State over the last six years under TS-iPass. All the companies are expected to create direct employment for more than 14.48 lakh people. Tech giant Amazon’s cloud-based service Amazon Web Service is set to make the single largest foreign direct investment (FDI) of Rs 20,761 crore in the State.
The State’s investment portfolio covers a wide range of sectors – from IT to pharma, realty to renewable energy, fertilizers to textiles and plastics apart from research and development as well as food processing sectors. “About 80 percent of the investments promised have been operationalized and others are in various stages of completion,” IT and Industries Minister KT Rama Rao announced recently.
Officials told Telangana Today that investment in the IT sector alone is estimated to be around Rs 38,000 crore. As a result, IT exports from the State have shot up from Rs 57,000 crore in 2015 to an estimated Rs 1.28 lakh crore during the last fiscal of 2019-20. Meanwhile, the realty sector too has attracted huge investments of over Rs 18,000 crore. Together, about 172 IT and realty companies are investing in the State to create about 8.34 lakh jobs. “Investments of IT and realty sector are clubbed together since major real estate investments are made to provide office space for IT sector,” an official of Telangana State Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (TSIIC) told Telangana Today.
In the solar and renewable energy sector, about 201 companies are investing about 17,944 crores with the potential for about 6,697 jobs. The pharma and chemical industry accounts for investments worth Rs 12,028 crore where about 872 companies are being established to provide around 68,682 jobs. However, the textiles industry turns out to be the second-largest employer with 2.01 lakh jobs next only to the IT and realty sectors. About 534 textile companies are investing Rs 3,915 crore.
However, the largest number of industrial units were established in the engineering sector (2,721), food processing (2,152), cold storage and agro-based industries (1,636), cement and fly ash bricks (1,266), and granite and stone crushing industry (1,113). Officials stated that most of these units were micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) having a combined job potential for about 1.6 lakh jobs.