Uttar Pradesh on track to become trillion dollar economy: PM Modi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Sunday said  Uttar Pradesh was on track to becoming India’s first trillion dollar economy.

After inaugurating UP Investors’ Summit 2018 on February 21 here, Modi had thrown a challenge to Maharashtra and UP as to which among the two states could emerge as the first state to touch the trillion dollar economy level.

Modi, who laid the foundation of projects worth Rs 600 billion here today, said the ‘groundbreaking ceremony’ was actually ‘record-breaking ceremony’ given the short time that the Yogi Adityanath government had taken to start work on such high-value projects.

“What the UP government has done is no mean achievement. The state leadership has transformed business intent into investment. The work culture is fast changing and there is now a conducive business environment,” he observed

The PM claimed in the past it was a challenge for the state to attract investment, but now that challenge has been turned into an opportunity even as he underlined that UP had immense investment potential still to be harnessed.

“I believe that UP would not take much time to achieve the challenge and become a trillion dollar economy,” Modi noted.

In the current fiscal, UP’s Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) is estimated at Rs 14.89 trillion or roughly $215 billion (pegging Indian Rupee at 68.62 against a US dollar). Therefore, the state economy needs to expand more than 4.6 times to touch a $ trillion.

In 2008-09, the UP GSDP stood at a little over Rs 4 trillion or $57 billion. Thus, it took the state 10 years to leapfrog 3.77 times from $57 billion to $215 billion in 2018-19 (projected). Therefore, the state would need humongous growth rate and expansion of economy to touch that mark.

Together with Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, UP is among the country’s top economies in India.

Earlier, Modi laid the foundation of projects worth Rs 600 billion across sectors. These projects were part of the Rs 4.68 trillion worth of investment proposals netted at the UP Investors Summit 2018 on 21-22 February, which was also inaugurated by Modi.

The bulk of the 26% of projects pertains to heavy industries, followed by food processing (17%), IT (11%), housing (10%), MSME (6%), diary (5%), tourism (5%), animal husbandry (4%) etc.

“It is a remarkable feat to overcome hurdles of clearances, litigations, press scrutiny etc to ensue projects takeoff in such short duration. This indicates the leadership qualities of Yogiji and the concerted effort by government departments and officials,” he added.

The event was also addressed by top industry captains, including Kumar Mangalam Birla, Gautam Adani, Subhash Chandra, Sanjeev Puri etc. The companies that witnessed the foundation laying for their projects included Reliance Jio Infocom, BSNL, Infosys, TCS, Adani Power, Paytm etc.