Congress Deputy leader in the lok Sabha and former Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh on Thursday questioned the “misplaced” hype created by the Government over the promised investments during the last two days of the ‘Investors’ Meet’.
Capt Amarinder asked as what was the status of the earlier commitments and incentives to the existing industry which is reeling under serious crisis.
“let the government give details about the Rs65,000 crores investment commitments made during the previous investors’ summit, most of which remain unfulfilled,” said Capt Amarinder while expressing serious doubts about the seriousness of these commitments and MOUs signed at the summit.
He observed that the very fact that the entire emphasis of the government was on encouraging youth to go abroad and that too for menial jobs like those of drivers and construction workers speaks volumes about its ability and confidence in generating jobs which the promised investment should otherwise have created in Punjab itself.
“The current summit had only betrayed the classic and characteristic paradox of this Government that while the existing industry was either shutting down or moving out, the Government was trying to invite others to invest,” he said.
The former CM said that offering lucrative incentives to attract fresh investors was fine but what about the existing ones, particularly those in the small and the medium sector, which are suffocating and dying.
JAKHAR DEMANDS POWER INCENTIVES FOR COTTON, FRUIT GRADING, WAXING UNITS
Welcoming the Punjab Government’s move to offer electricity at Rs4.99 per unit to the new investors for five years, the Congress legislative Party (ClP) leader Sunil Jakhar on Thursday demanded that similar incentives should be given for the survival of cotton industries and promotion of fruit grading and waxing units.
Regarding the “ordeal of other industries”, Jakhar said that 345 cotton ginning and pressing factories were in working order when the SAD-BJP alliance took over reigns in 2007. “But, only 120 were found functioning last year due to wrong policies pursued by the government,” he said.
Raising another important issue, he said that the businessmen were waiting for VAT refunds to the tune of about Rs300 crore but the Government had not been able to clear the same owing to red-tapism and rampant corruption.“The Government now talks of launching single window system and fast processing of files but only time will tell how fair they are in implementing the same,” he said.
BAJWA BlAMES SUKHBIR FOR MASKING POOR INDUSTRIAl SCENARIO
Punjab Congress on Thursday blamed Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal for befooling the people by making them believe in “industrial mirage” while making attempts to mask the “deteriorating situation” in the state leading to the closing down of more than 20,000 industrial units in the State during present SAD-BJP regime.
“Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Badal is trying to befool people by making them believe in the industrial mirage he is showing them in this virtually the last year of the term of the present government while masking the deteriorating situation that has resulted into the shutting down of more than 20,000 industrial units in the State during the present regime,” said the state Congress president Partap Singh Bajwa.