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Journalism of Courage
After wooing agriculture implement makers, Bihar is now inviting sports goods manufactures in the state. To attract the manufacturers from Punjab and to project Bihar as an attractive investment destination, S Siddharath, principal secretary of the Department of Industries, Bihar, led a high-powered delegation to Jalandhar on Friday. The session, on ‘Opportunities in Sports Goods Sector Manufacturing in Bihar’, was organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in Jalandhar.
A roundtable meet with the prominent industrialists of the sports goods sector was also organised. And, several industrialist from Jalandhar said that they were ready to invest in Bihar. “It’s a wonderful opportunity for the manufactures, but it would be a disastrous for Punjab if the sports industry starts moving out from here,” said Ajay Mahajan, chairman of the Jalandhar Sports Goods Manufactures and Exporters Association, while talking to The Indian Express after the meeting. He said that Jalandhar’s sports industry is worth Rs 4,000 crore and around 2 lakh labour employment is generated through it here.
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“We need our VAT (value-added tax) and GST (goods and services tax) refunds on time for further investments but we are not getting for years which is discouraging and even we had demanded a new 100-acre sports complex for further growth but governments ignored that, too,” said Mahajan, adding that even we have no research and development facility here due to which our growth has been affected.
The Punjab government should think about that how it can stop its industry here which has already set up plants in Himachal and Jammu, said Ravinder Dheer, a prominent sports good manufacture, adding that the projects would be cleared in 48 hours and even the larger projects would be cleared in a month.
