Nagpur: After cutting a sorry figure following the flight of at least five major projects including the $20 billion Vedanta Foxconn semiconductor project and Rs 22 crore Tata Airbus defence plane production project to Gujarat and other states, the Chief Minister Mr Eknath Shinde will lead about 20-member delegation to attend the World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting at Davos from January 16 to 19 to project Maharashtra’s pre-eminence in attracting domestic and reign direct investments.
Mr Shinde will use the forum to spell out the state government’s investor friendly strategy and invite the global investors for their investments in the state.
Magnetic Maharashtra
Apart from infrastructure, the Shinde led delegation will hold deliberations and one-on-one meetings with the investors from automobile, auto components, Electric Vehicles, IT and ITeS, logistics, defence, start ups, fin tech, textiles, agri business and climate financing. In addition, the government proposes to enter into MoU with the investors at the sidelines of the WEF meeting. A special Maharashtra pavilion will be set up to boldly play up ''Magnetic Maharashtra.''
A senior industry department officer told the Free Press Journal, ‘’The upcoming WEF conference is quite an important event for the state government to reach out to the global investors and explain to them the government’s resolve to provide an investor friendly environment without any policy and regulatory disruptions. The government will assure a single window clearance for an investor. The government, which has already released a slew of policies including logistics, start ups, will come out with an IT policy.’’ He said that the government has recently amended the package scheme of incentives to ensure more benefits to the investors.
Official: State has adequate strength to attract more investments
Another officer said that even though the state has lost five projects to other states it has adequate strength to attract more investments. ‘’Since the new government took over the state has received investment proposals of almost Rs 1 lakh crore. In the last 22 years, Maharashtra has the highest cumulative FDI flows of 29.4% as compared to the other states. The state has almost 3.7 times higher cumulative FDI than Gujarat and 2.2 times higher cumulative FDI than Karnataka. Given the FDI distribution, GDP size and prevalence of key investment factors in Maharashtra especially talent and skill, law and order, connectivity, the state is primed to attract a larger chunk of greenfield FDI in the future,’’ he noted. He further added that since a large manufacturing base already exists in the state, brownfield FDI (expansion projects) will also see an up-stick as global markets recover to pre pandemic levels.
The officer from Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation said that in the last three years cumulatively Maharashtra has received the highest FDI inflows of over $56 billion quarter on quarter basis as compared to the other states. ‘’Of the total $591 billion FDI inflows in India, Maharashtra accounts for over $174 billion from 2000 to 2022,’’ he noted.
