Punjab Government on Friday offered a plug and play industrial park, adjoining Mohali international airport, exclusively to prospective South Korean investors for setting up their ventures in the State.
Announcing this during a high-level interaction with a South Korean delegation, which was presided over by Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal also offered South Korean investors fixed power rates for a 10-year period.
Sukhbir also assured that Punjab would provide “cheapest power” among all States in the country to new investors for which a policy was being firmed up.
Sukhbir asked the heads of the Korean companies to take advantage of the huge incentives being offered by the State Government to entrepreneurs, and also assured pre-cleared sites to the Korean investors, saying 600 such sites had already been finalised.
Meanwhile, the electronic giant Samsung evinced keen interest in investing in the state after which the Deputy Chief Minister asked the Principal Secretary Industries Anirudh Tewari to take the proposal forward.
Batting for strong strategic ties between South Korea and Punjab, Badal sought South Korea’s cooperation in the fields of education and skill training besides other varied fields of trade, commerce and information and technology.
“While only three percent of Indians are equipped with technical training, Koreans’ track record in this regard was marvelous at 98 percent. It is the need of hour to provide quality education to the youth of the state for which Koreans could play a leading role,” said Badal.
Terming Punjab as the most attractive investment destination in these and many other areas, he said that the state desired to focus investment in manufacturing, infrastructure, automobile, IT and consumer electronics sectors. He also enlisted the support of South Korea for development of smart cities in the state.
South Korea Ambassador Joon Gyu lee said that Korea was particularly keen to forge business ties, joint ventures (JVs), partnerships, mergers and develop other inter-trade mechanisms like appointing dealerships and distributor channels with the industrialists from Northern India, especially Chandigarh and Punjab region.
Samsung Electronics vice president Kyoung Soo Kim evinced keen interest to invest in biometric technology and offered to explore electronic production unit in the state.