Agencies

With the Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions, which contribute 52% of the state's GDP, being the worst-hitdue to the lockdown, UD Minister Eknath Shinde demands that future investments be decentralised.

In a letter to Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar and Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta recently, Shinde said that since the MMR and PMR's service sectors contributed 52% to the state's GDP, the economy would really start rolling and lakhs of jobs will be restored only after these regions, which are COVID-19 red zones, start operating post-lockdown.

"We may have allowed business in other areas to restart, but that won't suffice. We should learn from the Coronavirus experience and prevent a similar situation in future. We should appoint a task force of ministers and experts to form a policy of decentralising development activities," he said.

Shinde has suggested that several sectors could be taken to the 24 districts which would be connected to Mumbai by the Samruddhi corridor. "The travel time would be reduced to 4-6 hours and this would augur well for the export-related industry.

Every revenue division has a specific nature for supporting a specific industry. The new policy should be flexible in offering concessions to the investors in different divisions. I suggest that a task group of urban development, industry, finance, revenue, tourism and others be formed to decentralise development activities," he said.