“Around Rs 72,000 crore investment has come into the state in the last three years. More than 60 per cent of it has come to Pune,” said State Minister for Industries and Mining Ashokrao Chavan while speaking to the media at the silver jubilee anniversary functions of Mitcon Consultancy Services here on Saturday.

Of course, the proximity of the city to Mumbai has been a major draw. “Everybody want to be close to Mumbai, which is why Pune is preferred. Pune has been lucky. It has got the major share of industrial development in the last three years. General Motors, LG, Volkswagen, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), to name a few, have come here,” he said.

The availability of good manpower with good expertise has also worked out well for the city, he said. The need now, according to Chavan, is to develop good infrastructure and connectivity to match the growth.

Chavan, who is also that state minister for Special Economic Zones (SEZ) said the government would continue to troubleshoot for the Videocon SEZ at Wagholi, which is 10 kms away from the city, and at Ambani SEZ in the Raigad district.

Dismissing comparisons between the recently scrapped SEZs in Goa and the trouble in Nandigram, Chavan said that the conditions in Maharashtra were different and more conducive towards SEZ. He said that the “minor problems” like rehabilitation and land acquisition would soon be solved adding that acquiring land was the most basic incentive the state could to offer industries.

“On one side there is criticism that the state government needs to create more jobs, opportunities and push growth. And when we try to do that, we are criticised,” he said. The most critical aspect was making land available, he said, adding that the new rehabilitation policy of the state would be announced soon.

Chavan admitted that the bleak power scenario in the state was proving to be a deterrent in attracting players in the state but with private players and cooperatives entering the fray, the situation would improve in the next three years.

The concern for the government now is how to match the growth in certain pockets of the state like Pune with other lagging districts. The new industrial policy of the state government, which would be announced in early February, would aim to correct this skew and focus on ways to bring neglected districts of the state within the ambit of growth, with industries would be given incentives to invest in the neglected regions of the state, he said.

Chavan agreed that regional imbalance was acute in the state. “ Seven out of the eight districts in Marathwada, with the exception of Aurangabad, fall below the national Human Development Index (HDI) average,” he said.

Lately, however, there had been a few positives, he said. “There has been some investment in parts of Vidharbha and Marathwada like in Chiklur, Waluj, Butibori and Nanded. Vidharbha has some IT industries. However, growth is unequal and needs to be spread out,” he said.