From chips to tourism, UP marks out sectors for support and growth

Uttar Pradesh is on the track to become a $1 trillion economy by 2027-28 due to a host of factors including increased spending on infrastructure, improved law and order and better business environment, Awanish Kumar Awasthi, advisor to Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said, even as he called for “hard work” to attract FDI to the state and to tap the growing sectors of semiconductors, electronics and software exports.

 

Awasthi said employment and skilling are also among the focus areas where the state needs to do more work and it is here the newly-launched scheme that promises an interest-free loan of Rs 5 lakh for youths will come in handy.

 

 

He was speaking at a panel discussion on ‘Environment Protection with Infrastructure and Tourism Development in Uttar Pradesh’ at the recent Business Standard ‘Samriddhi’ event held in Lucknow.

 

Awasthi said that CM Adityanath’s dream is to make UP the most prosperous state of the country with its GSDP ahead of Maharashtra or any other.

 

“Uttar Pradesh with the country’s largest number of international airports, highest number of expressways, highest number of four-lane highways, largest number of petrol pumps, CNG stations and bank loans has no reason to not achieve the target,” Awasthi said.

 

He said the scale and speed in which development is being done in UP since 2017 is unseen.

 

Due to good financial management, revenue growth from GST, mining, manufacturing, excise and other sectors has risen 3-4 times since 2017 levels. 

 

“We are now a revenue surplus state,” Awasthi said, adding that everyone knows that capital expenditure is mandatory for building infrastructure and UP has invested no less than Rs 150,000 crore in building world class infrastructure in the state.

 

“All this has come from our own resources,” Awasthi said.

 

He said that when the target to achieve a $1 trillion economy by FY28 was fixed, our GSDP size was around $0.24 trillion. This means that our economy needs to grow by five times over the next few years to achieve the $1 trillion target.

 

“And, I am happy to state that in FY24 we had set a target of achieving a GSDP of Rs 25.89trillion which has been successfully reached, which in itself is a big achievement,” Awasthi said.

 

He said the speed and scale at which the state is working can be gauged from the simple fact that in 2017, the budget for the department of horticulture in the state was Rs 94 lakh which has now grown to almost Rs 131 lakh, a jump of nearly 40 per cent.

 

“Before 2017, the maximum rise in budget that any department could dream off was just 10-15 per cent, which clearly shows that our scale has risen manifold,” Awasthi said.

 

He said all this makes us confident that we would achieve the FY25 GSDP target of Rs 31.98 trillion.

 

Citing another example, Awasthi said that the budget of the tourism department in 2017 was just Rs 200 crore, which has grown almost 10 times since then.

 

Earlier, Tirupati was the most frequently visited religious tourism destination site in India, but now, Varanasi, Ayodhya and Mathura have taken over that.

 

“We don’t have hotel rooms left in these places and one needs to book months in advance to get a decent accommodation. Tourism sector in the state too has grown by almost 40 per cent which would see further boost with the annual Kumbh pilgrimage slated for January 2025,” Awasthi said.

 

He said UP’s mantra for growth is that every person should get employment, and every woman should be employed in a safe environment.

 

Instead of distributing freebies, incentives should be provided through the budget so that the industry can also progress, Awasthi said, adding the state is playing a vital role in achieving Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of making India a 5 trillion dollar economy in the next few years.

 

He said the state is now running on ‘Yoginomics,’ where every department has to use technology to bring Uttar Pradesh to the top in all government schemes.