Mohinder Verma
JAMMU, Mar 21: In what could be termed as glaring example of ‘discrimination’, the State Level Rehabilitation Committee (SLRC) has approved 59 sick units of Kashmir valley and only 8 of Jammu province for revival by providing soft loan during the last two years.
According to the official document available with EXCELSIOR, although the number of Small Scale Industrial units in the State has gone up there are cases of sickness of units with some of them having become non-functional and others simply untraceable due to a number of reasons.
About 32.71 percent of units become sick due to financial crunch, 30.55 per cent due to law and order and other problems, 19.40 per cent due to marketing problems, 9.24 per cent due to raw material unavailability and 8.10 per cent due to migration. For rehabilitation of potentially viable sick units, the State Government is providing soft loan to the extent of 30 per cent of total requirement under Rehabilitation Policy.
Among the total 457 sick units—-368 in Kashmir valley and 89 in Jammu province, 67 units were approved by the State Level Rehabilitation Committee during the past two years for revival by providing soft loan. Of these 67 units, 59 are in Kashmir valley and 8 in Jammu province.
A total of 38 sick industrial units have been selected by SLRC for soft loan in Srinagar district, four each in Budgam, Pulwama, Shopian and Baramulla districts while as three each in Ganderbal, Anantnag and Kupwara. As far as Jammu province is concerned, eight sick units of Jammu district have been selected for revival while as none of the sick units of other districts was selected by the SLRC. There are 18 sick units in Udhampur, seven in Samba, six in Poonch, five in Doda and two each in Kathua and Rajouri districts.
For revival of 59 approved sick industrial units of Kashmir valley, an amount of Rs 801.31 lakh has been approved while as for eight units of Jammu province SLRC has approved an amount of Rs 69.42 lakh. Against 59 approved units of Valley, soft loan has been disbursed to 30 units while as against eight approved units loan of Rs 5.50 lakh has been provided to two units till date.
Though the number of registered SSI units in the State has gone up from 43689 in 2001-02 to 54716 in 2011-12, the number of functional units has come down considerably during the period. As per 3rd All India Census, there were 15253 functional Small Scale Industrial units in the State but by November 2012 the same came down to 659 units. With the decline in number of functional SSI units in the State during this period, the employment also came down from 50643 persons in 2001 to 4707 in 2012 (up to November).
According to the document, after the announcement of Central Package during 2002 and State Industrial Policy 2004 around 177 large and medium industrial units were cleared in the Apex Project Clearance Committee with an investment of Rs 5440 crore and target of employment to 38,870 persons. However, 55 large and medium units with an investment of Rs 2400 crore providing employment to 18000 persons have been set up till date while as 23 units with an investment of Rs 1021 crore and employment potential for about 3200 persons are under implementation.
“The remaining projects are yet to be taken up for implementation on ground for various reasons”, the document said.
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