Telangana seeks `5k cr from Centre for Pharma City, NIMZ

Hyderabad: Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister KT Rama Rao on Wednesday urged Union Minister of Commerce and Industry Piyush Goel to allocate special funds in the upcoming union budget 2021-22 for various projects in the State.

KTR requested Goel in a letter for projects such as Hyderabad Pharma City, NIMZ (Zaheerabad), National Design Centre (NDC), and setting up of Industrial Corridor in Telangana.

He thanked the Centre for including Hyderabad – Warangal, and Hyderabad – Nagpur Industrial Corridors by NICDIT and for considering funding the initial two nodes for the Hyderabad Pharma City (HPC) and National Industrial Manufacturing Zone (NIMZ), Zaheerabad. The estimated project cost for taking infrastructure development in these two nodes is about Rs 3,000 and Rs 2,000 crores respectively.

Rao said that the State government was keen on the development of these two projects on a fast-track basis. He requested the Union Minister to allocate funds to the extent of at least 50 per cent of the project cost in the budget estimates for 2021-22. He said that the Government of Telangana was developing Hyderabad Pharma City (HPC) project as the 'World's Largest Integrated Pharma park' to promote domestic manufacturing of pharmaceutical in line with the 'Make in India' and 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat' initiatives of the Union Government and to consolidate the leadership position of India in the pharmaceutical sector.

The project will be first-of-its-kind featuring state-of-the-art Infrastructure, common facilities including Zero Liquid Discharge (ZLD) based Common Effluent Treatment Plant (CETP), integrated solid waste management facility, district heating, cooling systems, Logistic Parks, Global Pharma University, Regulatory facilitation cells, Common Drug Development & Testing Laboratories, Startup/ SME Hub, etc. The project has received an overwhelming response from both domestic and global companies to set-up manufacturing units. Overall investment potential of the project is estimated to be around Rs 64,000 Crore with employment generation of 5.6 lakh jobs (direct and indirect), KTR said.

The minister said that the state government had sought funding to the tune of Rs 4,922 crore from the Centre towards the development of External and Internal Infrastructure development as per the NIMZ guidelines. "Given the National importance of the project, I would like to request you to kindly consider a budget provision to the tune of Rs 870 crores in the Budget for the financial year 2021-22 to support the development of Hyderabad Pharma City," said Minister KTR.

In another letter, Minister KTR requested budget allocations for the National Design Centre (NDC) and stated that Hyderabad was proposed as the preferred location for setting up of the first National Design Centre (NDC) by DPIIT. He also mentioned that his team was working closely with DPIIT to understand their vision of the centre and have already submitted a Detailed Project Report with inputs from all National Institute of Design (NIDs).