BHUBANESWAR: The commercial ties between India and Japan are likely to get a further fillip with Odisha Government forging a partnership with the island nation for its mega investment summit, scheduled to be held here in November this year.While Japan will be the ‘partner country’, State Bank of India as banking partner intends to introduce a slew of products and services to cater to the financial needs of large corporates as well as small enterprises and self-help groups in the State.
“This partnership will provide a new impetus to the relations between Odisha and Japan and open up varied sectors for collaboration,” said Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. He will attend a road show in Delhi on September 12. The team will also visit three countries --- China, Korea and Japan between August 25 and September 1, and hold discussions with companies and prospective investors.
Sanjeev Chopra, Principal Secretary, Industries Department, Japan will be the only country partner for Make in Odisha Conclave-2018 as Odisha seeks a deeper engagement with Japan in diverse various sectors. A delegation will visit Tokyo later this month to pitch for investment opportunities in the State across six focus sectors including food processing and seafood, chemicals, plastics and petrochemicals, ancillary and downstream industries in the metal sector, electronic manufacturing, textiles, apparel and tourism.
The state has also earmarked 600 acres of land in Bhubaneswar to woo Japanese investors. “The land that we have identified is proposed to be developed as a multi-product park where companies from Japan can come and set up their units,” Chopra noted.
Industrial hub
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik also inaugurated two industrial projects and laid the foundation stone of 13 manufacturing units on Thursday at a cumulative investment `2,901.2 crore. OCL India Ltd, the flagship company of Dalmia Cement (Bharat) Ltd, topped the list of investors with `1,994.98 crore followed by IFFCO, Jyoti Solar Solutions Pvt Ltd, Grasim Industries Ltd, Indo Nissin Foods Pvt Ltd and Hindustan Urban Infrastructure Limited.
At a time when the state seems to be falling behind in private investment inflows with 2017 seeing private investments stumbling down to a new low of mere `6,971 crore, sources in the know say that the Government is mulling collaborations with IT majors like TCS and Infosys. Similarly, there are also plans to collaborate with networking giants such as Reliance Jio and Cisco.
The second edition of the flagship investors’ meet will be held from November 11 to 15. The first edition in 2016 saw the State receive investment intent of more than `2 lakh crore across 10 diversified sectors, Naveen said.