Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday opened up to the Who’s Who of India Inc. During the plenary session of Make in Odisha 2018, Naveen made the move and urged industry captains to ask him about Odisha and the opportunities it has to offer. This is how his tete-a-tete went:
Anil Agarwal, Chairman, Vedanta: Would you highlight anything that Odisha has to offer on industry front? How do you make the world excited to come here and any plan on tourism?
CM - Indeed, we do have a lot of potential. We have historic temples, huge coastline of almost 500 km. We have great Chilika lake, wonderful beaches, wildlife sanctuaries. We are working very hard in tourism sector and it’s certainly been getting here, coming up very well.
Sajjan Jindal, CMD, JSW: How much importance do you give to Odisha? Do you give the skill development much importance?
CM - We have an excellent policy for skill development. We have a partnership with Singapore to which almost a 100 teachers went and got trained. In fact, we are working so hard in it that we want people to say ‘Are you skilled in Odisha?’
Sangeetha Reddy, Joint MD Apollo Hospitals: The city has become greener, cleaner and more beautiful. You see a galaxy of industrialists who are so happy that they are breathing happily in your city. What is your environment policy for the entire State? May you please tell about your health policy?
CM - As far as environment is concerned, Odias are very tree-loving people, and Odisha is one of the few States where tree cover has grown more than the national average.
As far as health is concerned, we have a new health policy, which is not insurance based. While the Union Government’s health policy is just for people below poverty line, our health coverage is for everyone.
Mukesh Ambani, Chairman, Reliance Industries Ltd: I think the global investment community is enthused with Odisha. Can you share with us the priorities of the State as you would like to see investment flow in the next three to five years? Since you are passionate about sports and education, can you share with us, how we in industry can contribute to your sports and education vision?
CM - As far as investment is concerned we want to take advantage of the natural assets, what we have. Mineral assets should be developed and bring jobs to our people.
Apart from minerals, we would also like to develop industry in many other areas. We are certainly succeeding in that.
Sport is for the youth and youth is for the future. So, investment in sport is investment in youth and investment in youth is investment for future. We have been developing sports facilities.
I would like to thank Kumar Mangalam Birla for the state-of-the-art shooting institute. I hope that we can produce many great players. And you all know, we are having the Men’s Hockey World Cup in Bhubaneswar this month.