Amid Covid-19 headwinds, Adityanath reaffirms trillion-dollar economy goal

UP to float global tender for selecting a consultant for ambitious task

Even as the covid-19 headwinds have severely impacted the commercial and industrial sectors globally, the Yogi Adityanath government has reaffirmed its target of Uttar Pradesh becoming a $trillion economy by 2024-25.

The target is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi envisioning a $5 trillion economy mark for India.

While, the government had deferred its roadmap regarding the $trillion economy goal following the covid-19 lockdown in March 2020 and the emphasis on curbing the pandemic, setting up of medical care facilities and treatment of patients, the state has now decided to draw up its blueprint to achieve the milestone.

The state government will float a global tender for the selection of a consultant to prepare the roadmap for the $trillion economy mark. Once selected, the consultant would be mandated to submit its recommendations within 150 days.

 

A proposal in this regard was cleared by the Adityanath cabinet meeting by circulation on Friday evening. The request for proposal (RFP) document is also ready in this regard.

Since, the state has been witnessing gradual and robust improvement in revenue kitty, the government is confident of overcoming challenges in this regard. Recently, the state had announced 6.74 per cent growth in its revenue collection in August 2020 compared to the corresponding month last financial year.

Compared to the revenue kitty of Rs 8,942 crore in August 2019, the collection in August 2020 breached the level of Rs 9,545 crore, nearly Rs 600 crore higher. After sluggish revenue collection in the initial lockdown months, particularly April and May 2020, the state’s earnings have been witnessing improvement with the revenue collection in July 2020, at Rs 10,675 crore, reaching 97 per cent of July 2019, when the mop up stood at Rs 10,926 crore.

“The economic activities in UP had begun to gain momentum from July, which was also reflected in our revenue collection,” according to UP finance minister Suresh Khanna, who also claimed that UP had outperformed peer states in terms of rising state earnings.

Meanwhile, UP has made a giant leap of 10 places to be placed 2nd, behind top placed Andhra Pradesh, in State Business Reform Action Plan (BRAP) 2019 ‘Ease of doing business’ annual ranking released by union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and union commerce minister Piyush Goyal in New Delhi yesterday.

UP has left several leading states like Gujarat, Telangana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra etc. behind in this ease of doing business ranking.

The improved matrices spanned various reform areas such as labour regulation, online single window, access to information & transparency, land administration, construction permit, commercial disputes, inspection enablers etc.

“Our government has been successful to improve ease of doing business by introducing various IT driven modules, Nivesh Mitra is one of such successful tools,” UP industrial development minister Satish Mahana said.