Srinagar, Oct 13: Of the eight District Industries Centres (DICs) in Kashmir that replied to Right to Information (RTI) queries filed by this correspondent, six have recorded no investment from outside Jammu and Kashmir in their industrial units between 2019 and December 2025.
The six are Srinagar, Anantnag, Budgam, Ganderbal, Kulgam and Shopian. Together, they reported 636 industrial units, none with outside investment on record. Srinagar, the Valley’s principal commercial centre, accounts for 335 of them. Anantnag reported 105 units, Budgam 93, Ganderbal 41, Kulgam 36 and Shopian 26. In Ganderbal, the response says all 41 units were established by local investors.
All the outside investment recorded in the replies is concentrated in two districts.
Baramulla reported Rs 235 crore across 41 units, while Pulwama reported Rs 188 crore across 307 units. Together, the two districts account for Rs 423 crore. Baramulla’s response states that no individual unit in the district received outside investment exceeding Rs 100 crore.
Taken together, the replies cite 984 units across the eight districts: 636 in the six districts with no outside investment and 348 in Baramulla and Pulwama.
The findings come after the changes introduced in August 2019, following which efforts have been made to attract capital from outside the Union Territory. The RTI replies offer a district-level view of where the outside investment recorded by the DICs has gone during that period.
The figures need to be read within the limits of the information provided. They cover only the industrial units included in the DICs’ replies. They do not capture investment in sectors such as tourism, hospitality, real estate or infrastructure, which may fall outside DIC records. Nor do they mean the units in the six districts received no investment at all. Local entrepreneurs may have financed their businesses through personal resources, bank loans or government-supported schemes.
The replies also leave several questions unanswered. They do not specify the number of outside investors involved, the sectors in which the money was invested, the actual expenditure incurred by individual units, or the employment generated. These details would be necessary to assess the wider economic impact of the investment recorded in Baramulla and Pulwama.
The district findings are in line with the wider pattern across the Union Territory. Official data accessed earlier by Greater Kashmir showed that local entrepreneurs established 2,056 of the 2,279 industrial units set up across J&K between 2019-20 and 2025-26. Non-local investors accounted for 223 units. Local investors thus set up approximately 90 percent of the units during the period.
Those units collectively involved investment of Rs 16,598.97 crore and generated 75,848 jobs. The data, however, does not establish the respective shares of local and non-local investors in total investment or employment.
The two datasets measure different aspects of industrial activity. The UT-wide figures classify units by the origin of investors, while the RTI replies provide district-level information on outside investment recorded by eight Kashmir DICs. They cannot be combined to calculate the total outside investment in J&K.
An industrialist familiar with the sector said both local and outside investors have a role in the region’s industrial growth. “Outside investment is important, but the local entrepreneur is already here, has invested his capital and understands the market,” he said. “The new Industrial Policy should create conditions where both can grow.”
