The State government’s move to privatise the critical mineral resources along the coast, including rare earth deposits, does not bode well for the future of the State, as it could lead to the plundering of natural resources by private players, former Industries Minister P. Rajeeve has said.

Responding to the revised Budget proposals of the newly formed United Democratic Front (UDF) government, the Minister said on Friday that the last Budget presented by the Left Democratic Front (LDF) for the current fiscal had already announced a Rare Earth Corridor focused on value addition.

The previous State Budget had also earmarked ₹100 crore to establish a Rare Earth Critical Minerals Mission in partnership with State undertakings, including Kerala Minerals and Metals Limited (KMML), KELTRON, and the Non-Ferrous Materials Technology Development Centre under the Union Ministry of Mines. The proposal had subsequently found place in the Union Budget as well.

However, the present government is moving ahead with a plan to exclude public sector undertakings entirely from the project and fully privatise it, which is not feasible for the State, the Minister said. He also criticised the terms ‘Invest Keralam’ and ‘Branding Keralam’ coined in the revised Budget, pointing out that similar initiatives had already been proposed by the previous government under the names ‘Invest Kerala’ and ‘Kerala Brand’.

Further, the Assembly had passed a rule with a provision for the formation of a committee headed by the Chief Minister as chairman and the Industries Minister as co-chairman as part of the ‘Invest Kerala’ project. What the new government has now proposed is merely a revamp of the structure of the committee to be constituted under the rule, he said.

Mr. Rajeeve also questioned the decision to establish 10,000 new Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) across the State with an allocation of ₹100 crore, when two ongoing projects, Mission 1000 and Mission One Lakh MSMEs, are already in place. The first project aims to scale up selected MSMEs to achieve a turnover of ₹100 crore, and around 543 MSMEs have been selected so far under the initiative. Mission One Lakh, meanwhile, seeks to identify and support selected MSMEs in achieving a turnover of ₹1 crore each

. Instead of announcing a new project, the State government should have strengthened the existing initiatives, he said. He further alleged that there was a shortfall of around ₹400 crore in the total allocation for the Industries and IT Department in the revised Budget.