Adityanath govt to woo Gujarati businessmen at Ahmedabad road show

The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh is gearing up to woo Gujarati business and investor community during a roadshow at Ahmedabad on January 10.

The Ahmedabad event is part of the investors’ roadshows being organised by the Yogi government at six top Indian cities as a prelude to the mega UP Investors’ Summit in Lucknow on February 21-22, 2018. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the big ticket summit, where the state is eyeing aggregate private investment deals of almost Rs 5 trillion.

Thus far, five roadshows have been held at New Delhi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Kolkata over the past few weeks. At Mumbai, chief minister Yogi had personally interacted with top industry captains, including Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani, bankers and investors.

Although Ahmedabad is the last on this itinerary, it is touted to be the money spinner for UP given Gujarat’s status as the country’s top industrialised state, apart from being Modi’s home state. The fact that Modi himself represents UP’s Varanasi constituency in Parliament and shares an affectionate bond with Yogi is seen as stoking synergies in favour of the state.

UP industry minister Satish Mahana would lead the state delegation to Ahmedabad to lay the red carpet for the Gujarat based industrialists, apart from national and international companies operating out of the Western state and invite them to invest in the state.

In fact, the state is trying to replicate ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ model to attract big-ticket investors. Vibrant Gujarat, termed as the Davos of the East, is the biannual global investors’ summit started by Modi during his stint as CM. The last Vibrant Gujarat edition was held in January 2017.

Meanwhile, in the five roadshows held so far, UP has claimed to have garnered total investment proposals of over Rs 2.85 trillion with Mumbai roadshow accounting for the maximum investment proposal totalling over Rs 1.25 trillion.

The last roadshow held at Kolkata on Friday generated Rs 350 billion in sectors, including finance, infrastructure, mega food park, solar park, road etc.

Over the last two months, the Yogi government has been on a virtual overdrive to aggressively promote ‘Brand UP’ and the forthcoming summit at various forums. Mahana said the dispensation had undertaken proactive steps to attract investment, improve law and order and create a conducive doing business environment.

Besides, the government has prepared a blueprint to give the state capital a massive facelift for the mega-summit. Invitations would be sent out to the PMs of several other countries and ambassadors of Asian and European countries as well. About 5,000 guests, including top industrialists and investors from across India and the world, are expected to attend the two-day summit.

During the Mayawati and Akhilesh Yadav regimes, investment proposals worth Rs 500 billion were received in UP. However, most proposals proved to be mere photo-ops and never materialised due to the sloppy follow-ups, policy flip-flops and perception of bad law and order.