Odisha health minister Pratap Jena on Wednesday invited the country’s top investors in the health care sector to invest in Odisha and assured them that the state would provide them unencumbered land at competitive prices for setting up hospitals.

Addressing an investors’ meet in Chennai to attract private investment to Odisha’s healthcare sector, Jena said viability gap funding during the crucial initial years of operations in addition to the multiple other benefits would be provided as per the Odisha’s Healthcare Investment Promotion Policy, 2016. The investors’ meet was organised in the run-up to the Make in Odisha Conclave 2018.

The meet reportedly saw an encouraging response from investors — such as Apollo, Kauvery, Dr Agarwal’s Eye Institute and Medall. The road show in Chennai comes close on the heels of the investors’ meet organised in New Delhi a fortnight ago where 52 healthcare investors — including Max Healthcare, Manipal group, Glocal Healthcare, VPS Heal-thcare, Yashoda Hospitals and Cygnus Medicare — had evin-ced interest to explore investment opportunities in Odisha.

Stating that Odisha provides tremendous untapped opportunities for private investment in healthcare, he said: “The 25 locations where affordable hospitals are proposed to be set up by the state government collectively entail investments to the tune of Rs 1,300 crores which would, in turn, create 2,900 new hospital beds. This will be the single largest public-private partnership initiative in health care sector and will create a model for expansion of health care into the smaller towns of India in the next few years. This is likely to create more than 10,000 new high-paying and highly-skilled jobs in the health sector of Odisha.”

The other key proposal that was showcased to investors was the operations and maintenance support for the proposed cancer hospital at Jharsuguda.

This has been envisioned to provide quality cancer care services to 83 lakh people in west Odisha. While the state government will design, finance and build the infrastructure and also procure the equipment, the private partner will have the responsibility of operating and maintaining the hospital to provide seamless healthcare service to the people.

Some of the key national players operating in Odisha include Apollo Hospitals, Care Hospitals, AMRI Hospitals, L.V. Prasad Eye Institute and Sunshine Hospitals.