Investment proposals at Rs 6.48 lakh cr

The total investment proposals announced by chief minister N Kiran Kumar Reddy at a media briefing on the concluding day on Friday touched Rs 6.48 lakh crore as compared with Rs 3.15 lakh crore declared a week ago.

While the government continued to receive investment proposals for signing the MoUs till the last minute, the steep surge in value of these projects became possible as the authorities added all the previously considered pending and ongoing public as well as private sector investments to make the MoU mela a grand show.

Reddy said the Rs 6.48-lakh crore investment proposals included a foreign direct investment of about Rs 1 lakh crore and Rs 1.11 lakh crore from the public sector, both central and state.

The energy sector with the proposed creation of 54,000 Mw in new capacity under coal, gas and renewable sources at an investment of Rs 2.96 lakh crore came as the single largest contributor to the bulging investment numbers followed by equally unusual response for setting up huge refinery projects.

The chief minister announced he would monitor the progress on ground by reviewing them on a monthly basis apart from deputing escort officers for all the major projects.

He also announced that the process of clearances would be made hassle-free to the companies by fully implementing the G2B portal initiative, introduced by the Centre on a pilot basis, in the state in the next three months for the purpose of eliminating human interface and the delays through the online approvals system.

Of the total 243 investment proposals, there are 95 projects with a combined investment of Rs 2.23 lakh crore across various sectors including cement plants with a combined size of 12-15 million tonne capacity. MoUs for 11 infrastructure projects worth Rs 33,300 crore, six IT projects (Rs 22,402 cr) and 12 tourism projects (Rs 1,700 cr) were also signed on Friday.

Promising the sky to the investors, the chief minister said his government would ensure an overall policy climate to make the state the final destination for prospective investors. AP would soon become a surplus power state and the industrial power tariff would be the cheapest compared with any other state in the country even after the proposed tariff hike from the next financial year, he said.

The chief minister, however, asked the companies not to trade the incentive package being offered by Andhra to bargain more from other states.

When his attention was drawn to the the absence of uniformity in the quantum of incentives offered for the projects within the sector, he justified the government’s discretion saying they offered more incentives to projects from sectors that were considered important for the state’s economy.

Absence of big industrial houses
While several companies from outside the state had lined up for MoUs, country’s top industry captains nor delegations from big industrial houses such as Reliance Industries,Tata or Reliance ADAG group turned up.

The plenary sessions on the first day went off without much fanfare while the sessions scheduled for the second day were completely scrapped to make way for the government’s power point presentations and MoU signing ceremonies.