Nearly half of the people who have been allotted government land at Industrial Growth Centre ( IGC) Lassipora in south Kashmir’s Pulwama district have fail to set up their units.

Up to 500 business units have been registered by small industries development corporation (SIDCO) at valley’s only industrial growth centre in Lassipora. However out of the  five hundred “only two hundred units are in production,” said Abdul Rehman, Manager Estates at SIDCO Lassipora, adding that up to one hundred business units are under construction.

 Remaining 40 percent entrepreneurs have been asked to evict land after they failed to work on their proposals while as 10 sick units have been closed down.

 When the SIDCO officials were asked why so many new initiatives have turned into failures they said that rigid banking system and prevailing uncertainty had remained the main causes.

“Many entrepreneurs couldn’t utilize the land allotted to them because they were not financed by the bank,” said Manzoor Ahmad,” an employee at SIDCO, adding that banks finance only the activities they find viable.

He said that recently an entrepreneur who was intending to set up a unit for making detergents was turned down loan from the bank on grounds that the activity is not viable as per their norms.

“We can’t help them in getting their loans sanctioned, we have to register and allot land to them,” the officials said.

They said they give three months chance to non-starters and ask their eviction only when they get no satisfactory reply from the other side.

“Many entrepreneurs give up the idea because they don’t want to incur losses due to prevailing political uncertainty,” said Kamran Khursheed, owner of a small scale industrial unit at Lassipora.

He said in the recent uprising post Hizb militant Burhan Wani’s Killing ,a magnificent complex that was housing SIDCO office and a hotel was gutted after agitators put it on fire. “Incidents like these discourage newcomers,” he said.

The maximum failures have been seen in small scale industries like poultry, walnut processing and hallow brick manufacturing.

Guest