Bhubaneswar: President, Vedanta and former CMD NALCO TK Chand said Odisha can achieve one- trillion dollar size of economy if there will be a transformational change in our approach to achieve a mega-scale of growth.
Addressing a road show on metal and downstream here Friday Chand said it is a big dream for the state and the dream needs to be backed by an agenda.
The former Nalco CMD said at the present rate, Odisha can achieve a 1 trillion dollar size economy by 2050 but if the average GDP level goes incrementally up from 10 per cent to 12 per cent, one trillion economy will be achieved in 2045.
It can be fast-forwarded if we have a transformational change in our approach and fast-forward value addition for achieving the target 2036 when Odisha completes its 100 years.
While elaborating his ideas on the one- trillion dollar size of the economy, he emphasised that there should be a transformational change in our approach to achieve such a mega-scale of growth.
The metal & metallurgical industry with its downstream, upstream and ancillary has the potential to front-lead this transformation.
The game changer will be unlocking the mineral value chain in the state itself as value addition is exponential as the industry climbs in the value chain.
Giving an example of the aluminium industry, he said in the case of conversion of Bauxite to Alumina, value addition is only 5 times but the conversion of Bauxite to Aluminium, value addition goes upto 40 times and in case of high-end aluminium used in aerospace, the value addition become exponential.
In his exposition, industries in Odisha are in the high cost and low realization quartile and they need to move to low cost and high realization quartile.He suggested 80 per cent plus value addition in the state with high-end products and this will be possible with a steep growth of parks, hubs and clusters.
While acknowledging that the number of parks/ clusters etc has increased from 23 in 2011-12 to 126 in 2021-22, Chand called for tripling the number to give a solid boost to the growth and progress of state GDP.
He predicted a paradigm change where there will be shift from low-value addition to high-value addition, 5x increase in the number of applications of existing metals, an increase in depth of industrialization by mega parks, mega clusters and mega hubs, cost competitiveness of the product increasing Brand Odisha demand in National & International levels.
UNI
