Odisha govt to use live Twitter for investments

After tasting success in drawing investments at its roadshows in Mumbai and Bengaluru and the ‘Make in Odisha’ showpiece event staged here last year, the Odisha government is tapping social media to showcase its potential.

The state industries department is holding a live session on micro blogging site Twitter on September 18. Sanjeev Chopra, principal secretary, industries department (Odisha), will be interacting with Twitter users and the investor community during the session. Titled ‘New Opportunities in Odisha’, the live session is accompanied by the hash tag, #GrowWithOdisha.

“To our knowledge, no other state has gone for an initiative where a live session is hosted on Twitter to speak about investment opportunities. The questions are being sourced from members of Twitter, including general users and the investors,” said a government official. The talking points for the session are centred on priority sectors identified by the state government, key projects in each sector, ‘Ease of Doing Business’ initiatives and vision for the future where the focus would be on plans for each sector, projected growth and employment generation.

‘Team Odisha’, which is spearheading the investment promotion campaign for the state, has an official Twitter handle, ‘InvestinOdisha’ that routinely feeds updates on the efforts for attracting investments, new proposals drawn and stage of execution of projects. Be it a new policy announcement, a seminar with the industry stakeholders or Odisha’s latest move at rebranding by coming up with a new single window portal for interface with the investors, the Twitter handle unfailingly informs the users about every step taken.

By the end of this month, the Odisha government aims to come up with a single portal that will cater to the whole gamut of approvals needed by investors to set up shop in the state. This portal to replace the existing E-Biz portal is designed to track the entire stage of an investment — from proposal to production and also post allotment issues. Under this portal, 50 services would go online. They include key approvals for land, water and electricity.

Keeping to its thrust on implementation of reforms, Odisha has decided to go for a third-party assessment of the reforms. This initiative is expected to kick off by December.

Through such business friendly reforms, the state is eyeing to garner fresh investments especially in new, emerging sectors: food processing, petrochemicals, chemicals & plastics, infrastructure & logistics, renewable energy, tourism and healthcare. The target is attracting Rs 2.5 lakh crore of fresh investments in these identified sectors by 2025.

The outreach programmes and roadshows are also helping Odisha to improve its conversion rate. At the roadshows in Mumbai and Bengaluru and the showpiece ‘Make in Odisha’ conclave last year, Odisha drew investment intents totalling Rs 3.6 lakh crore from 124 projects. Seventy-four of these projects across sectors have translated into firm commitments where the combined investments amount to Rs 2.02 lakh crore. Employment potential envisaged for the committed investments is assessed at 104,573.