Northeast has entered its ‘Amrit Samay’: Union DoNER minister Kishan Reddy

Union Minister of DoNER, Tourism and Culture, G Kishan Reddy while addressing the 70th Northeast Council plenary meeting held in Guwahati on October 8, 2022, said that the Northeast region has entered its ‘Amrit Samay’ and that all should take its full advantage to awaken all possibilities of growth and development.

Requesting all stakeholders, central as well as state agencies including the private sector, Union Minister Kishan Reddy has urged to focus on further enhancing infrastructure and connectivity in the region so as to ensure rapid development and progress in the long run.

Kishan Reddy also highlighted the target utilization of 10 percent of Gross Budgetary Support (GBS) earmarked for the Northeast region for rapid growth, for which regular analysis of the 10 percent GBS utilization shall be done accordingly with reorienting of policies, overcoming data bottlenecks and striking coordination with central line ministries.

“Need to conduct a strengths and weaknesses analysis and identify gaps in key sectors. This would help in more targeted developmental initiatives,” said Kishan Reddy in his speech.

“This would help in more targeted developmental initiatives,” added Reddy. He further added that while selecting project factors such as NER district-wise SDG index, aspirational districts, connectivity to rural habitations and areas and level of poverty indices should be taken into consideration. He also urged the officials to ensure good tendering norms and robust monitoring.

Reflecting on tourism potential of the region, the minister informed that the Ministry of DoNER is constituting a Tourism Task Force to ensure realization of complete potential of the region. He said that developing tourism infrastructure, skilling and capacity building are the core priorities for developing Tourism in the region.
He also highlighted that we must also explore the potential offered by security services industry to generate employment among the youth in the NER.

The Minister further emphasised the need for private investment. He said that central and state governments need to jointly work to develop an investment-friendly environment in the NER. He suggested that a few top-priority/target sectors need to be identified and work on increasing investment potential of the region and overcoming bottlenecks in those sectors.

The Minister said that a Global Investors Summit for NER should be organized soon and all State Governments should start undertaking measures for developing an investor friendly ecosystem. Various measures such as changing the policies to suit the needs of investors, digitizing land banks, having plot level information, simplifying processes, providing single window clearance system, developing inventory of readily investible projects, establishing an investors’ facilitation centre in each State, investing on supporting infrastructure like approach roads, power connectivity, water supply etc, must be undertaken, he added. He called upon the senior officers to work on the aforementioned create an action plan for the Global Investors Summit in the coming months.