Vijayawada: Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy has blunted the edge of the Opposition parties’ main weapon – namely of “AP getting no investments” -- with the successful hosting of the two-day Global Investors Summit-2023.
The event attracted offers of investment worth Rs 13 lakh crore. The offer of huge flow of investments at the GIS came as a shot in the arm for the chief minister and his YSRC party that is set to face the assembly polls a year hence.
Notably, when Jagan Reddy assumed office in 2019, he first focused on stabilising the state before prioritising his welfare schemes. The opposition Telugu Desam, Jana Sena and others kept criticising him for not bringing investments to the state. They also created negative picture by alleging that AP was faced with a huge economic crisis like what happened in Sri Lanka.
For the past four years, Jagan has been criticised for not focusing attention on attracting any industries to the state but concentrating only on distributing freebies to the the people in the name of welfare the sections of the population.
TD and other opposition parties had also criticised the CM for “driving away already established industries as also those who were given clearances during the Telugu Desam term and were in various stages of grounding.
Interestingly, the GIS-2023 proved to be a ‘game changer’. The two-day event has resurrected Jagan’s image as he has succeeded in getting offers of investment from top industrialists like Mukesh Ambani, Karan Adani, the Dalmias, the Jindals, the Bangars and the Oberois. So many industrialists arriving on one platform was quite unusual for AP.
Ambani announced the plans of Reliance Industries to invest funds in the generation of 10GW of renewable solar energy in the AP.
While Jagan claimed to have received investment proposals worth Rs 13 lakh crore that has a potential to create six lakh jobs, the Opposition parties expressed doubts about materializing of at least 10 per cent of these proposals.
The chief minister quickly initiated action by setting up a monitoring committee headed by chief secretary, with officials from CMO and the special chief secretary for industries as its members, which would meet once in a week on a regular basis and clear applications for investments.
Political analysts felt that the appointment of a committee to follow up on the MoUs would be a good step forward. They said that in contrast to Chandrababu Naidu, Jagan Reddy “is a man of action.” Moreover, the CM has proven that he is equally keen on the state’s development and people’s welfare.
Ministers Buggana Rajendranath, Ambati Rambabu, Karumuri Nageswara Rao, Vidadala Rajini and others said, “GIS is a game changer’ in AP politics as it ended the opposition outcry that no investment was coming to AP under Jagan’s rule.” They said, “Jagan is today the brand of AP’.
