TN to ink more investment agreements

CHENNAI, INDIA: The Tamil Nadu government will sign investment agreements with several automobile and auto component makers and come out with a series of industry-specific policies soon, chief minister J. Jayalalithaa said on Wednesday.

"Tamil Nadu will soon sign memoranda of understandings (MoUs) with a number of companies, including both vehicle and components manufacturers," Jayalalithaa said, inaugurating the Daimler India Commercial Vehicle's truck plant at Oragadam, around 45 km from here.

Referring to the Vision 2023 document released by her recently, Jayalalithaa said: "My government is currently finalising a set of policy reforms that will translate my vision into reality."

Jayalalithaa said the government would soon announce industry-specific policies for automobiles, auto components, biotechnology, aerospace and renewable energy with special focus on solar power generation.

"The new industrial policy 2012 will accelerate the pace of growth of the manufacturing sector to 14 percent," she added.

She said the government was committed to improve the infrastructure network in the state by laying 2,000 km of six- and eight-lane expressways and 5,000 km of four-lane highways and providing 20,000 MW of power capacity before 2023.

Jayalalithaa said the state government had offered attractive package to support Daimler following which the latter has agreed to scale up its investment to Rs 4,000 crore as against its original investment plan of Rs 3,000 crore.