Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, the founder and CMD of Biocon Ltd, has come around to believe in the development of infrastructure in Karnataka, a day after she went hammer and tongs over lack of infrastructure in Karnataka.
Ms Shaw, a passionate Bangalorean and a strong advocate of development of infrastructure had earlier during this week said that while Karnataka government is embarking on its next edition of Global Investors Meet (GIM), there is hardly any infrastructure in the State on which investors can bank on. “Power, roads are a problem and successive governments are responsible to this,” she had said questioning on how the GIM will help solve problems.
A day after that vociferous outburst, the Government got its machinery into place and appeared to have convinced Ms Shaw that things are progressing and the GIM will help solve many of those issues. “Senior government officials came and explained to me that chunk of the proposed investments which are likely to be committed in the forthcoming GIM, will be to address power and basic infrastructure needs of the State. I have never opposed the GIM, but there has to be progress and there needs to be time-bound implementation of projects,” Ms Shaw said on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, Karnataka state officials claimed they already crossed the target of garnering investments to the tune of Rs 6 lakh crore in its forthcoming Global Investors Meet 2012. M N Vidyashankar, Principal Secretary, Industries Department said the emphasis this time has been on the energy and infrastructure sectors.
“Close to 32-33 per cent of all investments during GIM 2012 is from important sectors like energy, Infrastructure, Tourism, Health care among others. The GIM 2010 had a total value participation of Rs 3.89 lakh crore and the hit rate was close to about 62-63 per cent which is a very high figure as compared to the hit rates which other states in the country have in implementation of projects which were agreed upon during similar meets,” he added.
Lauding the efforts of the Karnataka government for its special emphasis on Energy and Infrastructure sectors this year, Ms Shaw added Karnataka has been playing a strong leadership role in the knowledge segment not only in India but in Asia too. “A meet such as the GIM helps to showcase this huge ecosystem that we have very successfully created in Karnataka,” said Ms Shaw.
The state has been a very attractive destination in many sectors and one of the very important focus areas this time is in the Energy and Infrastructure. These are two big needs of the state where we are in urgent need of both energy and advanced infrastructure,” “Enhanced Energy and Enhanced infrastructure will provide for robust growth for the State and we would be creating a very large opportunity for entrepreneurs, job creation and for economic development,” Ms Shaw stated.
