With over a lakh acre land bank available for industrial development, the Government of Odisha hard sell second edition of its flagship biennial event for attracting investment — Investors' Summit of Odisha — in Gujarat on Thursday.
A roadshow to promote the event which will be held in Odisha’s capital Bhubaneswar from November 11 to 15 this year was organised in Ahmedabad. The theme of the investor’s summit would be ‘Make in Odisha’ and a conclave too will be held during the event to showcase inherent advantages of investing in Odisha.
Odisha’s finance minister Shashi Bhushan Behera, Principal Secretary, Industries Sanjeev Chopra had panel discussion with businessmen in Gujarat. The delegation from Odisha head by Behera discussed the recently launched single window clearance portal for investors called GOSWIFT, the low cost of doing business in the state, dedicated sector-specific clusters and 1, 00,000 acres of land bank available for industrial development.
“Odisha is fast emerging as the manufacturing hub of Eastern India.With the objective of attracting 2.5 lakh crore of fresh investments and generating 30 lakh job opportunities as part of Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s Vision - 2025. The Odisha Government is working tirelessly towards diversifying and broadening the state's industrial development across the focus sectors,” said Behera while talking to the Pioneer.
According to him Odisha had distinct advantages to woo investors including stable Government for more than 17 years, 480 km coastline with deep water ports at Paradip and Dhamra, with combined capacities expected to reach over 400 MMTPA by 2020. Odisha was offering one of the lowest costs of doing business in the country in terms of power tariff, labour wage rates, cost of living, cost of industrial land etc., he claimed.
Industries secretary Chopra claimed that Odisha’s business friendly policies and the development of world-class infrastructure received very positive feedback from investors across the country as we have been able to create an ideal business ecosystem for various sectors to flourish in the state.
During the first edition of Investor’s summit in 2016 124 investment intents received by the state government and of those 76 projects worth over two lakh crores were in progress at different stages, said Chopra.
Former Gujarat cadre IAS Maheshwar Sahu who retired as Additional Chief Secretary Industries said that it would be win-win situation for investors from Gujarat and Odisha as businessmen from Gujarat would get opportunity to expand their business and Odisha would be benefitted with Gujarati business acumen.
It is worth mentioning that Gujarat’s biennial event Vibrant Gujarat Global Investment Summit initiated in the year 2003 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was Gujarat Chief Minister.
Over the period of time VGGIS has emergd as inspiration for states like Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhatisgarh, West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka and others to host similar events to attract investors in these States.