GS 3: Economy | Infrastructure: Energy, Ports, Roads, Airports, Railways etc.

Why in news?

• The Union Minister for Commerce & Industry and Civil Aviation, Suresh Prabhu, released the report prepared by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion (DIPP), Ministry of Commerce & Industry, on Industrial Park Rating System.
• Significance of the report:
• The Industrial Park Rating System is proposed to be translated into an annual exercise covering all the parks across India.
• The coverage would be widened and updated to bring in deeper qualitative assessment feedback and technological intervention and develop it as a tool that effectively helps for demand-driven and need-based interventions both by policymakers and investors.

Key Highlights:

• To optimise resource utilisation and enhance the efficiency of the manufacturing sector, DIPP launched the Industrial Information System (IIS), a GIS-enabled database of industrial areas and clusters across the country in May 2017.
• The portal serves as a one-stop solution to the free and easy accessibility of all industrial information including availability of raw material – agriculture, horticulture, minerals, natural resources, distance from key logistic nodes, layers of terrain and urban infrastructure.
• The Ministry has undertaken the exercise of studying infrastructure across states and in 3354 industrial clusters in order to assess the quality of infrastructure in industrial parks, to ensure that India moves into the top 50 countries in Ease of Doing Business.
• The portal has been actively used by the State Governments and Industrial Development Corporations over the last one year and they have nominated over 200 parks for assessment along the above parameters.
• The database includes 3000 parks and all the industrial parks will be rated on the following 4 points:
• Internal infrastructure
• External infrastructure
• Business services and facilities
• Environment and safety management