�Corridor\' to progress for Palakkad

PALAKKAD: The industrial corridor for Palakkad announced in the State budget by Finance Minister T.M. Thomas Isaac and the steps taken to set up a railway coach factory in the Kanjikode industrial area will accelerate the industrialisation of the district.

The Cochin LNG terminal proposed to be commissioned in 2012 will have a main pipeline to Palakkad that would supply gas and power to the district. This is expected to encourage more industries to set up units in the district taking advantage of the cheap power available from the gas project.

The Kanjikode-Pudussery-Walayar industrial belt has already become the second biggest industrial area of the State after Kochi.

The State government has allotted 426 acres of land at Kanjikode for the rail coach factory. Though the Union Railway Minister in her budget speech in Parliament said the work on the coach factory in Palakkad was progressing, there was no token provision made for funds in the budget. The project is being taken up as a Public-Private Participation (PPP) project. The coach factory will also bring more than 100 small- and medium-level ancillary industrial units to the area to manufacture components, sources in the Railways said.

There is also a proposal to set up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kanjikode. The government has identified 300 acres of land for the institute.

The Integrated Textile Park coming up on 350 acres of land; BEML project of the Defence Ministry on 400 acres and the rail coach factory planned on 426 acres in Kanjikode would make the area a major industrial centre of the country, he said.