With barely days left for a global summit here, Jharkhand is spending over Rs 150 crore on branding and face-lift before rolling out the red carpet for potential investors, an official said.
The Momentum Jharkhand Global Investors Summit kicks off on February 16 and the Raghubar Das government is branding it big.
They have hired chartered flights to ferry in businessmen and industrialists from Kolkata to Ranchi and have tied-up with the Air India and Alliance Air.
"Jharkhand was nominated as a partner to CII, and other business association and allocated Rs 30 crore," the official told IANS.
"The state cabinet gave its approval of Rs 40 crore for advertisement in news channels, newspapers," the official added.
The cost to be incurred by the CII on the chartered flights is estimated to be around Rs two crore.
More From This Section
The industry body urged the government to make arrangements of these flights keeping in mind the increase in the number of delegates expected to participate in the programme.
A total of 150 rooms were booked in posh hotels here including 90 in Radisson Blu, 35 in Capitol Hill and remaining in other hotels.
It is expected that more than 6,000 delegates would be participating in the event. It is estimated that around Rs one crore would be spent on hotel bills of visitors.
To make sure that the stay of these high profile people was worth remembering the state government has also decided to spend lavishly on their food.
An exorbitant Rs 4,000 per plate of food has been planned.
To ferry the visitors to and fro Khelgaon to their respective hotels the government has also hired 150 taxis for which an additional expenditure of Rs 15-20 lakh would be meted out.
Security which would be a prime concern during these two-day mega event would be taken care of by 4,700 jawans and officials of Jharkhand Police.
It is expected that Rs 1.50 crore would be spent for providing food at least three times on two days for those in-charge for security.
To erect the infrastructure required for holding the event another Rs 25 crore is slated.
Around Rs 10 crore would be spent on beautifying the city with flowers.
The opposition is against the huge expense although it says it is not against the investor submit, "there are few issues like... past MoU hardly translating into reality".
"Land is a big issue the plants will not come up on air," Jharkhand Congress general secretary Alok Dubey told IANS.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das has said that only those MoUs would be signed which will translate on ground.
--IANS
ns/in