• How-to

Home to Asia’s oldest stock exchange—Bombay Stock Exchange—Maharashtra boasts of one of the best strategic locations for business. Not only does it have world-class ports and air connectivity to most cities of the world, it is probably the only state that has established its strength in nearly all sectors of the economy—from automobiles and auto car components, to biotechnology and chemicals to engineering, electronics and software.

In fact, Maharashtra is the second-largest exporter of software with annual exports of over Rs.18,000 crore. It ranks first in coal-based thermal electricity as well as in nuclear electricity generation. Incentives schemes, excellent infrastructure and highly-trained manpower are some of the factors that work to the state’s advantage.

The first step
The Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC) is the state government’s agent for acquisition and disposal of land; providing infrastructure facilities and providing services for entrepreneurs. The corporation disposes the land by leasing out for 95 years for industries and also has facilities such as sheds and flatted units on the land to be leased. The corporation also helps industrial units with assured power supply, maintenance of industrial area and drainage schemes and other services such as banks.

Basic guidelines
First comes the procedure for land/shed allotment and various permissions. After the submission of application form with a copy of project report and constitutional document to the regional officer (RO), MIDC—for which you get a receipt of the offer letter—comes submission of the final application and payment of earnest money deposit (EMD) to the RO, within 15 days from the date of receipt of offer letter. Issuance of allotment order from the RO is done after 15 days of the EMD receipt. Next is the payment of balance occupancy price (BOP) to the RO, which should happened 30 days from the date receipt of allotment order. Possession of plot/shed is handed over within a week, on receipt of the BOP.

Thereafter, you have to submit an application for issuance of no objection certificate/locational clearance (in case of Mumbai Metropolitan Region)/small scale industries registration. For Mumbai Metropolitan Region, the concerned authority is technical advisor, MIDC, and GM (DIC) for other areas.

Next comes execution of Agreement to Lease (A to L), for which the concerned authority is the RO. Submission of building plans needs to be passed through the executive engineer, special planning authority, MIDC. For temporary/permanent water connection, the concerned authority is the executive engineer, while for power connection, you have to go through the executive engineer of the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB).

The building completion certificate and drainage completion certificate are provided by the executive engineer of the special planning authority. Lease and issuance of mortgage permission is cleared by the RO after the sanction of the loan by a financial institution and building completion certificate.

The where, who and why
Your industrial units will be sanctioned permission depending on the nature of your industry, product and process because of pollution control regulations. All manufacturing activity is classified as red, orange or green by the Pollution Control Board. Thus, while red refers to industries such as fermentation, sugar, fertilizer, pulp and paper, which are heavily polluting under Central Action Plan, orange refers to those industries that are not so polluting, such as hotels and restaurants, flour mills, non-alcoholic beverages, stone crushers as well as several others.

Green industry units are those that don’t generate process effluents or emissions and include small scale industries and cottage/village category, such as dal mills, steeping and processing of grains, tailoring and garment-making, handloom weaving and so on. Also, depending on their polluting levels, there are norms for industry development on river sides.

Also, the industrial policy of the state has divided talukas in the state into groups, while some districts are no industry districts (NIDs). Thus, while group A is made of developed areas such as the Pune and Mumbai Metropolitan Region, group B, C, D and D+ stand for lesser developed areas in descending order. Naturally, fiscal incentives by the government are more in lesser developed areas than the more developed areas. Also, there are regulations on the category of industrial units that can be set up in each industrial area.

Win with wine!
• Maharashtra put in place the Grapes Processing Policy in 2001, and now has two wine parks.
• Over 23 wineries are functional and grapes cultivation is abundant in the Nashik and Sangli districts, as well as Ahmednagar, Latur, Osmanabad, Pune, Satara and Solapur.
• The Grapes Processing Policy has brought down excise duty on wines, there’s relief in sales tax levels, licensing procedure is simplified and other infrastructure is made available under one window system.
• The Maharashtra Grape Board takes steps to promote the industry as well as look into quality control and certification.
• Apart from good quality roads, water supply, power and telecom, the wine parks will also have a farmers’ training institute, banks and a post office.

©Entrepreneur February 2011 by Entrepreneur Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

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How-to, Maharashtra