After Ficci’s (Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry’s) pullout from ‘Destination Madhya Pradesh’, an ambitious programme to showcase Madhya Pradesh, the state has now joined hands with Assocham to hawk the state.
The chamber is going to host an investors’ meet here tomorrow and claims to arrange deals of Rs 100,000 crore with various companies.
Destination Madhya Pradesh is often haunted by questions in the state Assembly and other circles on the “poor” state’s expenditure on foreign jaunts of officials, ministers, chief ministers and their family members. Under the ongoing investment drive in Khajuraho, the state industry arm is going to spend Rs 8 crore in two days at Khajuraho in association with a newly formed organisation ILFI (Infrastructure and Logistics Federation of India).
However, Assocham has said it would handle the programme cautiously and would see only serious players ink deal with the state government. “We have responses from companies like Videocon, Radico Pepsi, JSW, Piramal, DLF, Healthcare, Bhushan Steel, JSPL, Rahejas, Reliance, Monnet Ispat, Emerald Industries, Chhabra Ispat and Integrated Hytech. We will be more cautious than other chambers,” said Ravi Wig, chairman MP Advisory Council, Assocham.
“A number of information and technology companies from Bangalore and Chennai are also likely to commit their investment tomorrow,” he said.
Of the total Rs 370,000 crore investment deals signed in earlier investors meet only Rs 6,000 crore have come on grounds. “The government machinery is a big failure on the part of delivery. The only agenda of investment in Madhya Pradesh is to grab coal mines and land area,” an investor on condition of anonymity said adding, “how serious is the government on attracting investment is evident from the age-old corridors of secretariat where there is no waiting room for investors.”
A report of the chamber said more than 58 per cent of investments are in the announcement stages and about 40 per cent of the investments are under implementation. Implementation of projects involves 1.4 per cent of the total investment is stalled due to various reasons. The recent recession in Indian economy has however put a major investment plans on hold.
Madhya Pradesh has a total 3.5 per cent of the total investment announced by both government and private sectors in India as on March 2010. The state attracted Rs 371,000 crore which was 2.4 per cent of the total investment all over India. While in private investment MP’s contribution was 4.3 per cent, the report said.
