Trillion dollar economy target: UP CM lays stress on private investment

Says UP will play a major role in India's ambitious $5 trillion economy goal

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath has stressed on the importance of attracting private investment for achieving the target of the state becoming a trillion dollar economy by 2024.

Referring to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of propelling India as a $5 trillion economy by 2024, Adityanath said while the Centre had taken a bouquet of “positive” steps to realise the ambitious goal, the country’s most populous state, UP, had a major role to play.

He further observed that for India to emerge as a $5 trillion economy, all the states including UP needed to attract greater investment in their respective economies going forward.

Addressing the tri-monthly meeting of the state level bankers’ committee (SLBC) meeting at his official residence here last evening, the CM said his government had initiated “effective” steps to perk up the state’s economy in the next five years to hit a trillion dollar mark, including the periodic review of the flow of institutional credit.

Meanwhile, he urged the commercial banks to improve their credit deposit (CD) ratio in UP and actively contribute towards the development of the infrastructure sector.

Adityanath mentioned about the flagship Bundelkhand Expressway project, which has been recently funded by a consortium of commercial banks with a credit line of Rs 7,000 crore to buttress his point of the imperative of banking sector in the socioeconomic development of UP.

He said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government had launched the one district, one product (ODOP) scheme with the purpose of boosting the state’s indigenous and traditional industries and handicrafts, which had fetched good results so far.

“The state has posted 28 per cent growth in exports and we are confident that in the near future, UP would rank among the country’s top three exporting states,” the CM underlined.

Meanwhile, he exhorted banks to increase the credit flow under the various central and state government schemes aimed at promoting the micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) sector, such as PM Mudra Yojana, ODOP scheme, Stand UP India etc.

Adityanath stressed the state had also implemented sector specific new age policies to augment industrialisation, job creation and economic development even as he claimed UP was way ahead in terms of road connectivity and industrial land bank vis-a-vis peers.

"The state has improved its ease of doing business ranking and UP has emerged as an ideal investment destination in India, which will enable the creation of a large number of jobs in the state,” he added.

He informed the state was looking at garnering major investments in the defence manufacturing sector with its new policy and the proposed UP Defence Corridor, which will have six nodes at Kanpur, Jhansi, Aligarh, Chitrakoot, Agra and Lucknow and is touted to get investment of nearly Rs 20,000 crore in initial phases.