The Global Investors Summit in Vishakapatnam has concluded. Just in the first half of the first day, the Chief Minister hurriedly announced that AP has received 13 Lakh Crore Investments from 340 Companies providing 6 Lakh Jobs in 20 sectors.
The Government which has completely ignored investments and jobs creations in four years so far hurriedly wanted to show off something on that front and resorted to all the tricks.
Despite all the persuasions Tatas and Mahindras did not attend, Mukesh Ambani attended due to the political connections with YSR Congress. Telugu businessmen like GMR, Krishna Ella, Suchitra Ella, BV Mohan Reddy, and others have come due to local compulsions.
Most of them did not announce concrete investments and made only routine speeches. Some have reiterated the old investments which were kept on hold for a long time. Some faceless companies that announced big investments do not even have bare-minimum capital in their balance sheets indicating fake commitments.
So why all this hungama now?
Usually, making MOUs with companies is very basic. The actual investment happens only when the MOUs are realized. The groundwork will begin later on. The companies should come up with definite proposals like land requirements, preferred locations, the quantum of investment, and jobs they are going to create.
The Government will evaluate the proposal and extend the lands for free or at a discounted price. And there are other incentives like water, power, tax exemptions, etc. All these negotiations will take 1-2 years minimum and that will be followed by the construction of the industry and after that, it will become operational.
If there are any legal problems and issues in land acquisition, the time will get longer.
Very few governments have the commitment to get a proposal and constantly follow it up to realize the investment in the same tenure. One such investment in the near past is Kia Motors in Anantapur.
Jagan Government barely has one year before the elections. It is not possible even to ground 1% of these investments.
Jagan put aside many investments that came during Chandrababu Naidu’s tenure. We have seen what happened with Franklin Templeton. We have seen what happened to even legally binding PPAs. If that is the criteria, it is an easy guess that these investors would wait until the elections even to initiate talks.
But then, we will see them tomtom that they brought 13 Lakh investments and Six Lakh jobs to Andhra Pradesh.
