The third edition of the three-day CII Partnership Summit and the Sunrise Investment Meet held here at the sea-facing APIIC grounds at the Harbour Park saw signing of 734 MoUs envisaging an investment of ₹4.39 lakh crore with a potential for providing employment to 11 lakh people.
Unlike the previous two editions, the amount of investment proposals fell down drastically but Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu at the concluding ceremony on Monday declared that after a lot of spadework they had inked the agreements only with serious players.
The MoUs with proposed investment of ₹4.67 crore were signed in 2016, the first post-bifurcation year and it increased to ₹10.54 lakh crore in 2017. The government rejected 306 MoUs with an investment proposal of nearly ₹4 lakh crore due to failure to submit detailed feasibility reports. It has started investment tracker and constituted a helpdesk to monitor the progress of the proposals.
The summit attracted 2,500 delegates from 15 countries, partnership with South Korea, Japan and Singapore and 55 bilateral meetings. Prominent MoUs include investment by the Reliance, the LuLu Group, the Adani SEZ, electronic clusters, renewable energy and tourism.
The fallout of differences between the BJP and its ally TDP were evident as only Union Commerce and Industry Minister Suresh Prabhu attended the summit besides Union Civil Aviation Minister P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, who is from the TDP. Mr. Naidu during a special session with Art of Living founder Sri Sri Ravi Shankar expressed his dissatisfaction over the failure of the Central government in fulfilling its commitment. He explained that despite so many difficulties and division of the State in an unscientific manner, he had been working day and night to transform A.P. as the most developed State by 2029 and the best destination for living and investment by 2050.
“This was one of the best summits I have seen and we want to strengthen our partnership with the A.P. government in various spheres by facilitating investments,” CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee told The Hindu .
The reason for many keeping their projects on hold could be due to promises made in the Special Category Status and later Special Financial Package not materialising so far, an industrialist said.
