With investment commitments to tune the of Rs 6.85 lakh crore from private and public sector at the recently concluded second edition of the Madhya Pradesh Global Investors Summit, Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has reasons to be more than happy. Speaking to Samiran Saha of the New Indian Express, Singh said the summit was not only a branding exercise but it is also for the world to know and see that MP no longer among the backward states and has enviable infrastructure making it the topmost investment destination today, excerpts of the interview?
What are the key sectors where you would like investment to come in?
Investments are welcome in all sectors. From infrastructure to agriculture, defence, food processing and manufacturing we would encourage investment in all these and more sectors. We have a very investor friendly policy for the defence sector. We want to encourage small and medium enterprise in the defence ancillary sector as we already have defence manufacturing clusters in Jabalpur, Gwalior and Itarsi where PSUs are operating for many years. To encourage investments we will offer land at concessional rates.
Investments worth $100 billion are knocking at India’s eco-space, how much of a share you think MP can corner of this huge pie?
As I said earlier we have everything going in our favour. To start with we are no longer a backward state. We are a power surplus state, we have 20,000 hectares of unencumbered land bank. We are rich in minerals and have Asia’s thickest coal seam of 135 meters. The state has reported less than 1 per cent of mandays loss because of industrial strikes or lockouts. The state is just about an hour away by air from all the commercial cities and metropolises, 18 national highways measuring 5,000 km criss-cross the state and there is good intra-state road connectivity. All these attributes make the state an ideal investment destination. I am sure investors would like to make good use of these indices and choose Madhya Pradesh as their investment destination.
This year the state government did not sign any MoUs as was the case in the last summit, any specific reason?
This year we wanted to showcase that MP is no longer a backward state, this was more of a brand building exercise for MP and we have been successful in doing that. We have introduced the ‘single-door’ policy to make MP a ‘very’- easy to do business destination. We are in discussions with several business houses and are very hopeful of early results.
Food-processing industry has a huge potential in the state and is the state government’s thrust area, how has been the interest among investor in the sector?
We are almost the food and grain bowl of the country now. We are the country’s largest producer of soybean, pulses, garlic and oilseeds and a host of other agriculture produce. We are also a large producer of marigold and aromatic flowers. We have received several investment queries for the agro-processing industry and the response has been very encouraging. At this point I will not be able to give you the details as we are in talks with investors.
Which are the districts or towns that have the land banks in MP?
In MP we have over 20,000 hectares of low-cost land parcels available around Indore, Bhopal, Ujjain, Jabalpur and Gwalior. Apart from these the investors can choose or buy land at other places if they wish to.