British companies may join two new-age cities being planned near Bangalore, trade minister Anand Sharma said.
The two cities are among the 12 being planned under India’s National Manufacturing and Investment Zones (NMIZ) policy.
The zones will be a complete cities in themselves and will include large residential and entertainment areas, a large number of offices, and factories, unlike SEZs, which are primarily factory-zones.
Each zone is likely to focus on a key sector or area of expertise, such as manufacturing of electrical goods, or manufacturing of electronic goods, for example.
Three zones have been approved between Bangalore and Mumbai as part of the Bangalore-Mumbai industrial corridor plan. The two zones that the British have shown interest are the IT-focused one near Bangalore and a manufacturing-focused on near Tumkur, not far from Bangalore.
The Bangalore-Mumbai corridor is one of the three industrial ‘corridors’ planned, along with the Delhi-Mumbai and the Bangalore-Chennai corridors.
Some of the zones will be anchored by big industrial groups such as Mitsubishi.
The cities, some of which will be designed to house hundreds of thousands of people, will be designed from the ground up using the latest technology, mostly by foreign companies who want to create a manufacturing base in India. They will get certain legal and financial benefits from the government.
“We hope that the experience in advanced manufacturing and the technologies that Britain has in diverse sectors, including nanotechnology, aerospace, biotechnology, and life sciences, that would be used,” Sharma said.
India’s new manufacturing policy is aimed at increasing the share of manufacturing from 15% of the GDP to 25%.