Piyush Goel, Minister of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, urged the states to put the National Industrial Corridor Development Corporation Limited (NICDC) projects on the fast track and set a deadline for land acquisition and allotment in industrial nodes and clusters. Piyush Goyal in the Investor Round Table Conference on the National Industrial Corridor Development Program (NICDC), urges India towards making the best use of available facilities and coming up with ideas for the future. He said that 18 states are urged to decide, offer the land, or have to foreclose those projects and maybe offer them to other states willing to speed up the investment. He said that the units must be set up soon, which would absorb the new technologies and create employment opportunities. The government approved NICDC in December 2020 for developing 11 industrial corridors and developing 32 state-of-the-art projects in 4 phases by 2026-27. A combined investment of Rs 16,760 crore has been completed in four cities for the 173 allotted plots. The four Smart industrial cities are emerging at Dholera in Gujarat, Shendra Bidkin in Maharashtra, Vikram Udhogpuri in Madhya Pradesh and Integrated Industrial Township in Greater Noida in Uttar Pradesh. Goyal urged entrepreneurs to benefit from government initiatives, including NICDC, Digital India, Smart Cities, $1.4 trillion infrastructure projects in the National Infrastructure Pipeline, NICDC facilities and financial inclusion. He said that several states are offering incentives under NICDC projects. CEO of the Greater Noida Authority has committed to allotment of land in 20 days, and CEO, Dholera has offered a 50% discount on the land cost to the first anchors for the first 30% of plots available. He said that, at the national level, Infra initiatives are being driven under the PM Gati Shakti programme. It will play a key role in streamlining the remaining 28 NICDC projects that are under implementation to reduce logistics costs. Image Source Also read: Govt identifies 9 high-impact infra projects under Gati Shakti