AP, Telangana perform well in power, law and order

Visakhapatnam: Industry bodies hailed the two Telugu states for retaining the top slots in the ease of doing bu-siness (EODB) ranking. This was mainly attributed to healthy competition which made Andh-ra Pradesh and Telanga-na stay ahead of the oth-er states consecutively.

While AP again stood first with a score of 98.3 in 2017, Telangana came down to the second pl-ace with a score of 98.28 as per the recent data released by the Reserve Bank of India. The two states together shared the top position during the 2016 list.

The Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industries (FICCI) feel that both states are doing extremely well in a few parameters such as law and order, power, infrastructure and wa-ter supply that are basic requirements for any industry to flourish.

FICCI Telangana chapter president Devendra Surana said, “Though the Telangana government is  pushing industry, the state slipped to the second place in EODB rank. This is may be due to its slow pace in being favourable towards renewable energy. Telangana is little slow in tapping solar power. Moreover, government did not release the incentives that were promised to business units during the last four years. It should have provided power subsidy or GST rate cut as part of industry promotion.”

However, industry lauded the incentives offered by the AP government along with implementation of various policies. The single desk portal has assured transparency by providing online clearances without a human interface.

“Industry specific policies have attracted huge investments. This will translate into creating a lot of employment opportunities,” said D. Prasanna Kumar, chairman of the Andhra Chamber of Commerce, one of the oldest industry bodies in south India. “Economic activity has improved, particularly in the new sectors with a special focus on sunrise industries such as entertainment and tourism projects in the state. Government is also policy flexible if investments are beyond certain limits,” he added.

Citing an example, Mr Kumar said that an energy storage firm was planning to set up a unit in the state. Government assigned a dedicated officer to take care of all bottlenecks including their legal requirements. He was happy with the positive atmosphere.