CHENNAI: After bagging a mega footwear project of a leading supplier to Adidas for which Tamil Nadu was also in the race, Tada in Andhra Pradesh has started wooing entrepreneurs at the suburban Ambattur industrial estate.

For unit holders in one of the oldest industrial estates in the country, the possibility of Tada, about 60 km from Chennai, being part of their expansion plans suits them in view of the space constraints and the rising land prices in Ambattur.

Preliminary discussions between the Ambattur Industrial Estate Manufacturers' Association and the Andhra Pradesh agency charged with the responsibility of industrial infrastructure development began sometime ago, says an AIEMA leader. The option of taking their expansion projects to Tada was being weighed by many units, in view of the land prices in Ambattur that range between Rs. 20 lakh and Rs. 40 lakh per ground.

Just five years ago, there were not many takers for the land with the prices around Rs. 5 lakh a ground. Apart from the development of the areas around Ambattur, the arrival of IT and ITES companies have contributed significantly to the rise in demand for land. "Though [the Tada proposal] is in a nascent stage ... there is a lot of interest among the engineering and auto component units," says former AIEMA president A.S. Hariprasad. Noting that the Andhra Pradesh team also assured them of appointing an officer exclusively to get all the approvals and clearances for the units at Tada, he said: "We would soon be going there for discussions." Other assurances that the association got were grant of approvals within 45 days and fiscal sops for developing the "virgin land" in Tada.

Yet another reason for the units considering Tada is the introduction of Value-Added Tax in Andhra Pradesh. "We are losing a lot of orders because Tamil Nadu has not implemented VAT," he says.

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