Andhra Pradesh government gears up to attract investments

VIJAYAWADA: As the state government is gearing up to put Andhra Pradesh on a global map through a diplomatic outreach programme on Friday, positioned clearly to invite large investors, it is evident that Andhra Pradesh is being rebranded.

The present dispensation feels that the TD regime’s promotion of the state was surrounded with much hype without any pragmatic results. The present government feels that the TD government had done nothing on the ground to attract investments other than just holding partnership summits whose strike rate of implementation of MoUs was below average.

The Jagan Mohan Reddy government now wants to set up investment promotion offices, investor desks in business centres across major Indian cities such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai and selected foreign capitals such as Tokyo, Seoul etc. in order to enable regular interaction with top investors across sectors and bridge the information gap.

Wherever offices cannot be set up directly, the state will partner with CII, FICCI and other such organisations that have a presence in those countries in order to reach out to investors.

The new government has also identified four important sectors of AP where investment is being sought. Pharmaceuticals, automotive, steel, textiles, food processing, electronics and electric mobility. Further the state has plans to create industrial parks with common facilities in order to attract large number of investments.

“Andhra Pradesh has immense potential to become a global destination for investments in various sectors such as automobile, food processing, textiles, mineral based products, marine and electronic sectors etc. AP has a natural advantage to foster an industrial ecosystem given its treasure trove of natural resources, long coastline and skilled manpower. The state is also strategically located close to the domestic consumption centres such as Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Visakhapa-tnam and Mumbai. The long coastline enables the state to act as a gateway to South East Asian market. The CM Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy, envisions making Andhra Pradesh the best location for attracting investments across all the four sectors of the State. The government is making efforts to reduce the transaction cost to run businesses in Andhra Pradesh,” said a senior official in the CMO who was part of rebranding AP.

Besides setting up investment offices, the government is also planning to invite countries to set up their chambers of commerce in the state in order to facilitate strong trade relations with Andhra Pradesh.

Specific events for each sector will be conducted for which leading global players of the field will be invited to participate and share their thoughts on developing their sector in AP. Study tours to various industrial clusters within India and abroad will be organised to not only study how the cluster was developed but also to understand the needs of the industry in order to develop similar clusters in AP. Global sectoral events will be leveraged to promote the strengths and opportunities of Andhra Pradesh and its youth to a global audience.