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A tale of two cities---Hyderabad and Bangalore---engaged in an one- upmanship game to woo global IT investment dollars. A BT exclusive.
The 950 delegates---including 200 from 26 countries---assembled for the meet (and dined at the historic Falaknuma Palace and the arts village ‘Shilparamam’ in Hyderabad) were witness to 26 MoUs signed by the state government with private parties involving a total investment of Rs 356 billion. ``Projects worth another Rs 720 billion have been committed for grounding in the months ahead and a further clutch of projects worth Rs 220 billion are on offer in the state,'' pointed out the enthusiastic chief minister to those who did not care to sign the MoUs. Most of the MoUs related to the areas of tourism, airports and road projects, information technology, urban water supply, infrastructure and some industry projects. The major highlight, however, was the MoU to set up a LNG project, 350 km away from Hyderabad at the Kakinada deep water port in Andhra Pradesh. The project is part of the proposed Andhra Hydrocarbon terminal project involving a total investment of Rs 19,400 crore ($4 billion). The project is being set up by a consortium lead by the state-owned Indian Oil Corporation and Petronas of Malaysia and Coconada Port Company.
The Andhra officials are, however, not only confident of moving ahead of Karnataka, but also emerging as the top industrial state in the country. ``We are currently focusing on infrastructure projects such as parks, airports, and highways. These investments will, in our view, become engines to attract more investments to the state,'' says T.S. Appa Rao, 48, State Commissioner of Industries. So, it’s experience vs focus as the Great Investment Race enters the second stage. |
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Imagine
hard-selling to a point where one city offers an additional acre or two of
land to an investor just to beat a neighbouring city. If Andhra Pradesh
Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu could have his way, Infosys
Technologies could have walked away with a couple of more acres than they
require. The Seventh CII Partnership Summit held in Hyderabad, offered
Naidu an opportunity to leverage Hyderabad's strengths and he did not miss
the chance to woo his ‘‘friends and partners’’ at the meet.
Critics, however, see the exercise of the
chief minister as an attempt to merely match up numerically to Karnataka,
which talked of similar quantum of investments at its global investors’
meet last year. ‘‘The (Andhra Pradesh) state government is using the
CII forum to woo investors. Nothing wrong with that, but our approach was
to be more focused on the investors and that is why we held the investors
meet,’’ says B.S. Patil, 56, Principal Secretary (Commerce and
Industries Department), Government of Karnataka. The meet, he says, had
led to ‘‘investments to the tune of over Rs 27,400 crore for 257
projects that are today in various stages of implementation.’’ He
feels, industrially, Bangalore will always retain its edge over other
locations with a major engineering and IT industry presence, including
world leaders like IBM, Compaq, Wipro, and BPL.