As Summit kicks off today, hope floats on SEZs, Singapore

Express News ServicePosted online: Friday, January 12, 2007 at 0000 hrs
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GANDHINAGAR, JAN 11: As the much-hyped two-day Vibrant Gujarat Global
Investors’ Summit kicks off on Friday at the sprawling Science City
grounds in Ahmedabad on Friday, the focus area will be the 33 SEZs for
which the Gujarat Government expects a lot of investments to flow in.
And as it eyes prospective investors from around a dozen countries, it
is particularly eyeing Singapore in the infrastructure sector.

The summit will have as many as 45 international organisations along
with 82 participants from at least a dozen countries, besides
representatives of leading corporate houses from Gujarat and other parts
of India participating in the biennial meet.

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi will inaugurate the global summit
on Friday morning. Singapore Minister of State for Foreign Affairs
Balaji Sadasivan is the Guest of Honour, Investment Commission of
India’s chairman Ratan Tata is the Chief Guest and ICICI’s MD and CEO K
V Kamath will deliver a keynote address at the inaugural ceremony.

Seminars on power, oil and gas, chemicals and petro-chemicals, SEZ and
port-led development, agro and food processing, engineering, auto and
ceramics and biotechnology have been organised at the summit venue. The
government expects the investors to ink memoranda of understanding
(MoUs) in different sectors during the two-day global event.

“At the summit, we expect a good deal of investment from Singapore in
the infrastructure sector. Private investors in Singapore are facing
space or land constraints in their country, so they prefer to move out
and invest in this sector in other countries. And Gujarat having a lot
of potential, representatives from Singapore are expected to make
investment in this sector”, informed an official in the State Industries
department.

Sources in the CMO said on Thursday that delegates from the US, China,
Japan, Singapore, Italy, South Korea and Israel, apart from top
industrial and business honchos from across India, would participate in
the summit. The focus area will be the 33 SEZs already been approved by
the Centre.

Modi said that he expects a huge investment in 26 of the SEZs, which are
proposed to be developed by private parties. The biggest SEZs proposed
in the State are by the Adani Group at Mundra and Dholera, and by
Reliance and Essar at Jamnagar. “The government’s recent decision to
permit consumption of liquor in the area of proposed SEZs will help us
attract good investment in this focus sector”, explains a senior
bureaucrat close to Modi.

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