The Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor Project (DMIC) is a planned industrial development project connecting India’s capital, Delhi, with Mumbai, the country’s financial hub and main port city. The DMIC project was begun in December 2006, following the signing of an MOU between the governments of India and Japan. It is one of the world’s greatest infrastructure projects, with a US$90 billion estimated investment, and is envisioned as a high-tech industrial zone spanning six Indian states as well as Delhi, the national capital and a Union Territory. The investments will be spread out throughout the 1,500-kilometer Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, which will serve as the transportation backbone for the industrial corridor. There are 24 industrial regions, eight smart cities, two international airports, five power projects, two MRT systems, and two logistical centres on the list.
A 1,483 km railway track divided into 9 “Mega Industrial Zones.” The project was launched as a result of a December 2006 agreement between India’s government and Japan. The billion-dollar plan’s major goal is to build a fast and dependable commercial route connecting India’s north and south. According to Amitabh Kant, Secretary of the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), transferring cargo along this route currently takes 14 days. It will only take 14 hours once the DMIC is completed.
The eight investment regions proposed to be developed in Phase I of DMIC are Dadri – Noida – Ghaziabad (in Uttar Pradesh), Manesar – Bawal (in Haryana), Khushkhera – Bhiwadi – Neemrana and Jodhpur – Pali – Marwar (in Rajasthan), Pithampur – Dhar – Ambedkar Nagar (in Madhya Pradesh), Ahmedabad – Dholera Special Investment Region (in Gujarat), and Aurangabad Industrial City (AURIC) and Dighi Port Industrial Area in Maharashtra.
The project’s origins may be traced back to China’s preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics, which resulted in a diversion of India’s iron ore shipments from Japan to China in order to meet the country’s increasing infrastructure needs for the games. Japan, which imports substantial amounts of iron ore from India, was harmed because it needed to keep a steady supply of iron ore to serve its long-established industrial sector. Attempts to obtain ore from alternative sources in India proved logistically complex and costly. This prompted the then-Japanese Ambassador to India to propose the construction of a freight corridor similar to the Tokyo-Osaka corridor.
Investment and financing
The project initially intends for a direct investment of US$100 billion in this programme, ignoring investment in other related projects. Former Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma advocated the creation of a US$90 billion revolving fund with matching contributions from India and Japan to jumpstart the development of the US$90 billion Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Project. The ambitious project will be financed by a public-private partnership as well as foreign investment. This project will have a significant Japanese investment. The corridor will be 1483 kilometres long. The Japanese government initially provided $4.5 billion in the form of a 40-year loan with a nominal interest rate of 0.1 percent. The Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation, an autonomous entity made up of government and private sector representatives, will oversee the project.
Target businesses and companies
A total of 24 special investment nodes are envisioned to be developed by the government to offer impetus to Make in India, supported by Startup India and Standup India, to assist manufacturing, but any form of enterprise could be set up. The major purpose of these hubs is to help firms get their factories up and running rapidly with minimal delays in land acquisition and resource acquisition, as well as to provide low-cost, quick, and efficient transportation to ports and the rest of the country. The government would act as a facilitator, offering a “stable environment” to encourage corporations to invest more.
Employment generation
In five years, the project, which is envisioned as a global manufacturing and commerce centre, is predicted to treble employment potential, triple industrial output, and quadruple exports from the region (citation needed). The project is intended to create 3 million jobs, the most of which will be in manufacturing. In the immediate influence zone, there are around 50 million workers available, with over 250 million available across the states that the project will travel through. Several prestigious educational institutes, such as IIT, IIM, and Birla Institute of Technology and Science, are located throughout the states. Along the corridor, many other institutes, such as the Indian Institute of Information Technology, are planned.
The Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC), which will run through Delhi, western Uttar Pradesh, southern Haryana, eastern Rajasthan, eastern Gujarat, and western Maharashtra, will be developed with 24 nodes (investment regions and industrial areas), including six large investment regions of 200 square kilometres. The 7th state of Madhya Pradesh will also have an influence zone and nodes.
DMIC INFRASTRUCTURE
Some of the major cities, such as IMT Manesar in Haryana, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City, Dholera SIR, and Vikram Udyog Nagari near Ujjain, are already at various phases of development. The Indian government estimates that at least 100,000 megawatts (MW) will be required by 2012 to meet the energy demands of the corridor’s planned growth. To help fulfil this goal, the DMIC will construct four power plants with a combined capacity of roughly 4000 MW. While the exact number of power plants to be built is yet uncertain, the DMIC intends to use coal, gas, and lignite to fuel them. Due to the success of Singapore’s water management system, India has hired six Singaporean consultants, one of whom is Jurong International, to draught designs for the project new cities involved.
DMIC CONNECTIVITY
Three of the 14 massive Costal Economic Zones (CEZ) port developments in Sagarmala are along the DMIC corridor. Each CEZ with a surface area of 2,000 to 3000 km2 will be divided into many Costal Economic Units (CEU), and each CEU will be divided into numerous Port-Linked Industrial Clusters (PLIC). Within CEZ, “Costal Economic Units” (CEU) act as nodes; each CEU industrial estate has various industries. There will be many industrial units in each of CEU’s “Port-Linked Industrial Clusters” (PLIC). National GDP growth and ease of doing business benefits include the creation of 150,000 jobs by 2025, a reduction in export cargo transportation costs and time, and greater worldwide competitiveness of Indian exports. India’s 60 million small and medium-sized businesses account for 90% of the country’s total industrial output, and the country’s international trade policy aims to boost India’s share of global exports from under 2% to 3.5 percent (as of November 2017). Inadequate investments in port infrastructure have stifled growth. When compared to other Asian ports, cargo handling at several of the country’s ports is excruciatingly sluggish. Port expansion initiatives worth $2.3 billion are currently underway to increase capacity from 963 million tonnes in 2010 to 3.1 billion tonnes in a few years. Much of this expansion would rely on private sector investment, particularly from big terminal operators with existing operations in India, such as DP World and APM Terminals. Coastal Economic Zones (CEZ) are a component of the Sagarmala scheme, which aims to develop 14 business-friendly Coastal Economic Zones (CEZ) with a total investment of $6,500,000 million (equivalent to $7.7 trillion, US$100 billion, or €92 billion in 2020), centred around ports in India spread across a 7,500-kilometer national coastline, using the Make in India indigenous manufacturing scheme.
Maritime and inland waterways, water transport, coastal and cruise ships, solar and wind energy generation, auto, telecom and IT, and other sectors are targeted for manufacturing units. Each CEZ will include an economic zone that includes numerous coastal districts with significant ties to the region’s ports. Each CEZ will also benefit from the region’s industrial corridors, such as the Delhi–Mumbai Industrial Corridor Project, the Mumbai–Bangalore Economic Corridor, the Dedicated Freight Corridor, the Chennai Bangalore Industrial Corridor, the Visakhapatnam–Chennai Industrial Corridor, and the Amritsar Delhi Kolkata Industrial Corridor, among others.
