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Orissa offers goos infrastructure in the fields, such as energy, transport, irrigation, finance, communication, and social infrastructure -education and health. This has attracted huge inflow of foreign direct investment to the state.
Social Infrastructure
Education
Orissa is a forerunner in the field of education in the entire eastern region of the country. There are a large number of high ranked educational institutes, such as the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, and Xavier Institute of Management, Bhubaneswar. The state has 9 universities, 88 engineering / MCA colleges and 18 medical colleges. Some of the new institutes that are coming up include IIIT Bhubaneswar, NISER and IIT Kharagpur Campus at Bhubaneswar. The prestigious Vedanta Group plans to establish a world-class technical university with an annual intake of 100,000 students in 95 disciplines. Sri Sri Ravishankar Vidya Mandir Trust has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the state government to establish Sri Sri University of Art of Living with facilities to house 15,000 students and 1,500 faculty.
Health
Orissa has about 1,701 government allopathic medical institutions with 13,886 hospital beds in the state. By the end of 2004-05, there were 174 hospitals, 231 community health centres, 120 primary health centres (PHCs), 1,162 PHCs (with new facilities) and 14 mobile health units in Orissa. The state has launched a Total Sanitation Campaign to provide sanitation to all households in all the 30 districts by 2009-10.
Access Infrastructure
Transport
The state is developing its transport network to extend support to the growing industry base in the state.
The participation from the private sector has been a great help in furthering the establishment of a world-class infrastructure.
Roads
Orissa has about 238,000 km of roads, which includes 3,508 km of National Highways, 5,102 km of State Highways and 30 km of State Expressways. Public Private Partnership (PPP) initiative is being encouraged in the construction of new highways in the state. Some of the major projects recently completed in Orissa are the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Highway, Talcher-Gopalpur Highway and the four laning of Cuttack-Paradeep Highway.
Railways
The total railway line length in Orissa, at the end of 2005-06 was 2,340 km. Orissa is a link between the eastern and western part of India through the railway network of South-Eastern and East-Coast Railways. The commissioning of the Talcher- Sambalpur Railway has proved to be a vital link between the coastal and western Orissa. The Koraput-Rayagada and Daitari- Banspani lines have also been completed. The Haridaspur-Paradeep and Angul-Sukinda Rail links are vital to connect the mineral-rich regions in the state to industries. The Daitari-Banspani and Khurda Road-Bolangir railway links are under construction.
Ports
Paradeep Port in Jagatsinghpur district of Orissa, a major port of India, handled 38.5 million tonnes of cargo in 2006-07. Paradeep Port has its own railway system, water supply and bunkering facilities, and repair and maintenance facilities. The port implements the single-window service facility through its Central Documentation Centre (CDC). Besides housing the Traffic, Marine and Finance & Accounts departments, The CDC also extends customs and banking service facilities. Paradeep port handles various commodities, such as chrome ore, coking coal, fertilisersfood grains, fertilisers, food grains, iron ore and thermal coal. Other important ports are Gopalpur Port in Ganjam district and Dhamra in Bhadrak. The Orissa Government is encouraging private firms to step into the port sector to create infrastructure. This will boost up the upcoming metallurgical projects.
Aviation
Orissa has a domestic airport located at the state capital of Bhubaneswar in Khurda district. The airport is under expansion and modernisation.The airport connects the state with Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Nagpur, Mumbai and Hyderabad. Besides, there are 13 airstrips and 16 helipads.
Power
Orissa was the first state to initiate the reforms in the power sector. As part of the power sector reform, It undertook unbundling, corporatisation, and privatisation of the power sector. Orissa Power Generation Corporation Ltd (OPGC) has been established as a wholly owned government company with a view to establishing, operating and maintaining thermal power generating stations in the state. Orissa Hydro Power Corporation Ltd (OHPC) looks after hydro-electricity in the state. Four distribution companies, namely Western Electricity Supply Company of Orissa Ltd (WESCO), North Eastern Electricity Supply Company of Orissa Ltd (NESCO) and Southern Electricity Supply Company of Orissa Ltd (SOUTHCO), have also been created.
Industrial Infrastructure
Orissa government has taken several steps to improve industrial infrastructure. This has been a pivotal step towards promoting huge investments in the state. Some of the key features include;
- Development of industrial and social infrastructure in steel and mining corridors, including setting up of railway corridors, upgrading ports and developing expressways.
- Four new ports coming up with an investment of USD2 billion at Dhamra, Gopalpur, Jatadhari Muhan and Kirtania.
- Huge Investments in road and railways.
- Major expansion of Paradeep Port underway through public private partnership (PPP).
- Modernisation of Bhubaneswar Airport by Airport Authority of India with an investment of over USD60 million.
- Setting up of Bio-pharma park in Bhubaneswar through PPP.
- Setting up of Integrated Textiles Parks at Daleiput, Khurda and Choudwar.
Telecom and IT
The state had 3.8 million wireless connections and 770,000 wireline subscribers at the end of August 2007. The Orissa government improved the state of telecom infrastructure to assist businesses especially. It has been a key factor in establishing a largely growing IT and IT enabled Services base in the state. The state has created a number of IT Parks and towers. The Infocity, Bhubaneswar is an IT Park is spread over 350 acres. It houses companies, such as Infosys, Wipro, TCS and MindTree.
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