Innovating to get things done: Lessons from an industrial park program in India
Successful industrial parks can drive economic competitiveness (Credit: World Bank, Flickr)
Why do so many industrial park programs fail? They are popular across the developing world, inspired perhaps by China, where they are widely used as a policy tool and where their products are impressive to the visitor: functional parks with many firms and bustling activity. But horror stories abound, even in China, of empty parks, subsidized land speculation and tax erosion, and often no parks at all. This has not dampened enthusiasm, however. The theory is simply too seductive. By providing high-quality, shared infrastructure to firms in specific areas, industrial parks are meant to create pockets of competitiveness that eventually spill over onto the rest of the economy. For capacity-constrained governments, they have the further appeal of focus.
But the Indian government has an ambitious new plan to spur industrial growth, create 100 million jobs and increase manufacturing’s share in the GDP from 16 percent to 25 percent within the decade. If ratified, the National Investment and Manufacturing Zones (NIMZs) will offer simplified regulation and better infrastructure to attract businesses. In this second installment of the series on India’s industrial zones, we assess its prospects.
In 2009, an EU-based chemical manufacturer opened a plant inside one of FYR Macedonia’s recently-established special economic zones. The plant began production of catalysts, a type of emissions-control component used in automobiles. Two years later, this investment drove chemical products to the third-highest spot on Macedonia’s export list, lessening the country’s reliance on metals and textiles.