Business could boom big time in Tripura, but challenges remain

In the approaching years, businessmen will witness the emergence of Agartala because of the hub for transportation to the Northeast, and of Chittagong as the biggest trans-shipment hub inside the Bay of Bengal. It stays to be seen if Agartala will be capable of capitalizing in this geopolitical gain.

In some approaches, Tripura has been luckier than maximum different North Eastern states. Its decadal populace boom has been quite near the national decadal boom of the populace of 17.7%, especially because of the Nineteen Nineties. There has been little inflow of migrants since then. Moreover, with the nation being bordered with the aid of Bangladesh on three aspects – the fourth facet is hooked up to India), the normalizing of family members between Bangladesh and India has meant a first-rate deal of peace for this country.

That is one cause why the state authorities now wish Tripura to notch up plans to end up a huge exporter of goods and offerings. Hitherto, it has in large part been an importer. It imports rice, veggies, clothes and constructing fabric. Even milk (often inside the shape of powder). Much of this is paid for via oil and gasoline (more on this later) and by way of the rubber industry.

Tripura remains the second biggest producer of rubber in India (after Kerala) although the country has achieved nothing to place this distinction at the map of this united states. Even the rubber board makes a passing reference to Tripura.

But go through the once a year report of the Rubber Board, beneath the ministry of commerce and you may discover that Tripura does have foremost R&D facilities for rubber (pg 67 of the record).

But its contribution stays unknown and the private sector is likewise to be blamed. True, Tripura has the second one biggest wide variety of licensed dealers in India for rubber – Kerala has 6,686, but Tripura trails at 529 (united states of america general eight,252 — pg 81 of the record), And in terms of making use of for added licenses in 2016-17, there had been 734 packages from Kerala and simplest 4 from Tripura.

The country debts for around 60,000-eighty,000 tonnes out of the 690,000 tonnes of rubber produced annually (the country website does not provide any data on this). Information needs to be received from secondary assets. More information about rubber manufacturing can be obtained from here.

Yet the Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb is optimistic approximately enhancing the high-quality of production as well as the yield. He factors to the reality that Tripura has lots of herbal gas. Oil India and ONGC have their presence on this state and Vedanta is trying to have a presence right here.

Deb is making an attempt to entice traders to apply herbal fuel to extract carbon black which can be used with herbal rubber for tyre production.

“We are attempting to persuade traders to come back here and use our assets,” he told this correspondent. The fact remains that India is a booming market. It is the fourth biggest tyre marketplace inside the world. The enterprise itself accounted for an annual turnover of $ 12,700 million within the year 2015-sixteen, with the tyre zone contributing to $7,600 million, non-tyre area $ 5,100 million and export $ 2,300 million. India is the 6th largest manufacturer of natural rubber, and the second one largest patron of herbal rubber (for industries as numerous as balls to balloons)

Another enterprise Tripura is focussed on is milk. It believes it is able to be a first-rate player in dairy farming and cattle rearing commercial enterprise. In December 2018, a team from Amul (absolutely Gujarat Cooperative Milk Marketing Federation) flew into Agartala to exercise session approaches with the nation to develop dairy farming there.

The North East holds out the largest promise of dairy development. It has plenty of water, foliage, and chaff. NDDB is already selling a milk collection center and cooperative farms in Guwahati whilst Amul will be putting in its middle in Tripura.

The North East imports milk (normally milk powder) well worth around Rs.18,000 crore every 12 months, with Tripura, debts for Rs 1, one hundred crores). Tripura will now be linked thru Chittagong to nearly all of the other South East Asian countries that are also milk-deficient. Thus, Tripura could have fundamental markets – North East India, and southeast Asia. Of course, this may additionally make it a hub for meat and leather-items as properly.

Another awareness location is on tour and tourism. Tripura has some of the most picturesque spots – lake palaces, sanctuaries and places of awesome natural beauty. But the chief minister’s number one cognizance is on spiritual tourism. His reasoning is straightforward. Some of the holiest of shrines – particularly the ones associated with Shiva and Devi – can be found here. Pilgrims are less fussy approximately lodging and journey comforts. So that may be the right vicinity to begin. The improvement in accessibility by air, road, river, and rail will handiest help the nation deliver in extra tourists.

“Today, we do now not have a single four-famous person or 5-famous person lodge. We will improve our lodges in our locations of tourism, and then begin advertising them as nicely,” he says.

Travel and tourism is certainly an exceptional manner to make money, growth visibility and create employment.

There are other markets as well. Tripura imports around 20,000 tonnes of fish yearly (from Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, and Bangladesh). It has already created nurseries for fish fingerlings for farmers as every rural family has a backyard pond. The authorities want to raise fisheries both for local intake in addition to for exports.

But a massive formidable plan is clinical tourism. Almost 85,000 Bangladeshis come to India every yr, spending nearly Rs 4 lakh each, for clinical wishes. Deb desires to exchange this. He has already presented the 2 largest hospitals in Agartala to the largest sanatorium chains in India.

“We are in discussions. Once we clinch the deal, it will advantage each Tripura and the Bangladeshis. We will increase the medical tourism commercial enterprise, whilst the Bangladesh patients will save at least Rs 1 lakh on the journey due to the fact we are next door,” he says.

New types of rice and fish feed are being advanced. So is farm animals feed for the cows. The state has already given away a few 1,000 cows and wants to boom the populace by means of 10,000 more within a couple of years.

All this may be properly news to buyers and businessmen. But there’s a fly inside the ointment. Such plans aren’t backed up with data. The kingdom’s websites have little or no data. Even figures sent to the government are missing. Take the Economic survey as an instance (see table). Data for Tripura is lacking.

Unless you’ve got dependable information, you can’t plan reliably. Money does no longer come easily into locations where there may be uncertainty. Data lends credibility and reality. If best the nation could try this, it’s far quite feasible that investors will start to flock there.