 "Ramdev to be 'guest of honour' at Indore GIS")
Yoga guru Ramdev has been invited as Guest of Honour to the Madhya Pradesh government's biennial global investors' summit (GIS), which mainly aims at attracting foreign direct investment and investments from home-grown businessmen. Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan was on a series of foreign expedition to promote the state among tycoons in Japan, Singapore, the US, the UAE and the UK.
Indore will host the mega show on 22-23 October. This year, the summit will be held from October 22 to 23 with the theme "Make in Madhya Pradesh", focusing on sectors like textiles, handlooms, pharmaceuticals, automobiles, engineering, defence, renewable energy, IT and urban infrastructure development.
The yoga guru has planned to invest an amount of Rs 500 crore in Pithampur industrial area, near Indore, to develop a food park and is also learnt to be in parleys with the state government to make another investment of Rs 1000 crore in similar venture at Rewa — State Industry Minister Rajendra Shukla's home turf.
"Baba Ramdev has been invited as Guest of Honour and he will also deliver a speech in the two-day Global Investors Summit," Shukla told Business Standard.
During GIS 2014, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Anil Ambani, Mukesh Ambani, Cyrus Mistry, Anand Mahindra and a number of ambassadors and high commissioners of various countries were invited as guests of honour at previous summits.
The chief minister had personally invited Ramdev, the minister said, adding, "Acharya Balkrishna (Ramdev's aide) has given his consent to participate in the summit, and we are awaiting Baba Ramdev's confirmation."
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The yoga exponent had evinced interest in Madhya Pradesh few years ago and had reached a final stage to confirm investment in Jabalpur, which is rich in agro-based raw material for food items. However, for unknown reasons, the plan was shelved.
"Baba Ramdev's Patanjali is going to invest Rs 500 crore in Pithampur, Dhar district to develop a food park while talks are going on with him for Patanjali to further investment in Rewa for developing another food park with an investment of Rs 1000 crore," the minister further said. He recently had a meeting with Acharya Balkrishna.
The summit had attracted interest of investments to the tune of Rs 5.5 lakh crore during GIS 2014 where Prime Minister Narendra Modi had addressed a galaxy of investors. However, Ramdev was not among the big league of invitees. The Prime Minister is not visiting this season of GIS.
"The prime minister will visit Bhopal to participate in a function dedicated to ex-servicemen," the minister said.
Besides Ramdev, 16 Union ministers, 500 overseas delegates, 1500 top executives from various states, and 1000 businessmen from Madhya Pradesh will be invitees.
Besides, 42 ambassadors and high commissioners have also been sent invitations. Five countries including the UK, the UAE, Singapore, South Korea and Japan will be partner in the mega event.
The three-day GIS 2014 drew 5,000 business delegates, including ambassadors and high commissioners from 28 countries and 300 participants from 10 countries.