The state Cabinet on Tuesday approved the new Meghalaya Industrial and Investment Policy, 2024 which seeks to generate over Rs 10,000 crore investments from the private sector besides ensuring 90% job employment in the unskilled sector for local people of the state.
Addressing media persons after the meeting, Chief Minister Conrad K Sangma informed that the new policy will be officially released on March 14. This will be followed with the signing of certain memorandum of understandings (MoUs).
He said that overall, the new industrial policy is focusing on two aspects – one is to create employment and to promote priority sectors like tourism, agriculture and food processing, education, IT and second is to encourage the local procurement of raw materials from within the state of Meghalaya.
“We have also made some certain conditions that the local employment in the unskilled sector, once the subsidies are given, should be to the tune of 90% from the local population,” Sangma informed.
He however said, “And wherever specific skills are required, where for example, you require an optical fibre engineer or a special cook for some specific kind of food that is there and if those skills are not available so we are giving some space and rooms where at least two years only 25% will be required to be employed locally but in two years time that number has to go up to 50% at least. So these are for specialised areas of certain managerial level or certain skills which may not be available here but in general for the normal unskilled sector, employment has to be 90% from locals from the state of Meghalaya.”
Terming the new policy as the one of the most aggressive policies in the country, the CM said, “This again is aligned with the state’s objective of achieving a 10 billion dollar economy as we have mentioned we need to touch minimum investment of one billion dollar from the private sector. With this particular programme being in line we are expecting that we should cross more than one billion dollars. About Rs 10,000 crore of investments is what we are targeting in the next 3-4 years, through this policy and through the policy of GOI and through many other interventions that the state government has initiated.”
Further, the CM informed that the government of Meghalaya has recently come up with the Industries Meghalaya Agency (IMA) to streamline the entire investment process.
“We are trying towards ensuring that maximum investments from the private sector come into the state. Hence, in order to achieve that goal, we have come up with the new MIIP and this has also been aligned with the North East Policy that has come in recently, which was announced by the Government of India last week,” he said.
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