1

Destination Madhya Pradesh MP's investment hopes soar as Global Summit nears

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, interacted with potential investors and business leaders in New Delhi on August 4, 2006, in connection with the launch of a website constructed to promote the Global Investors' Summit that the state is hosting jointly with the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) on 4 and 5 January, 2007. A gold medallist in philosophy Masters, Chouhan began with a wise saying from an American author to bolster his promotional campaign for investment. Following is Chouhan's address.

Friends, I start my speech with words of William Arthur Ward
Before you speak, listen
Before you write, think
Before you spend, earn
Before you invest, investigate
Our proposed Global Investors' Summit is meant for the investors to help in their investigations. I want the industrialist to come to my state as an investor, and not as a speculator. I mean, whatever they invest, should be invested, because of their own impersonal objective reasoning - through their own investment analysis. They should convince themselves about the superior value opportunities existing in the state. But, in the process of decision-making, to give right information input about Madhya Pradesh, is our responsibility and this global meet is meant for this purpose only.

Country's granary
Madhya Pradesh has emerged as a prominent granary of the country during the last few years. Today we stand third in food production while first in the field of pulses and oil seeds. It clearly indicates that the base of our economy is very strong. The strong foundation of industrialization is a very healthy indication. We have brought up a revenue surplus budget after so many years. This situation has come after the decades that we did not to take an overdraft even for one day. The reason behind the increase in our income is our efficient administrative arrangements.
Frank Zappa said and I quote, that 'Politics is the entertainment branch of the industry'. So with humbleness, I say in the first instance that the industrial development needs the seriousness from all the stakeholders and no politics should be played. Secondly, I assure that development means change and change means risk. My government is ready to take risks for seeking the co-operation of the industries in the development of the state. The effective administration is assessed by the results and not by the attempts to simplify the systems. This is the result of our efforts to bring administrative efficiency that today Madhya Pradesh has come up to a leading position in country's various development projects. Whether it is Employment Guarantee Scheme or Prime Minister's Rural Road Scheme or the Public-Private Partnership Projects, Madhya Pradesh is ahead in all. If it is Sarv-Shiksha Abhiyaan, National Highways, supply of drinking water or electricity to the rural population, Madhya Pradesh is on second place. In a recent independent study about e-governance, Madhya Pradesh has been placed amongst first four states of the country.



Therefore, the time has come that I am fixing accountability and responsibilities of the over-runs of cost and time. With the industrialization only on paper, neither we can amuse ourselves nor the people can be misled. Industrial administration is not a slow motion film, this should be realized by all of us. Many of our laws are made according to the needs of British Raj and for the industry based development we are ready to critically analyse all those laws, rules and bye-laws so that we can set free the will power of the industrialists and investors from the irrelevant bondages.



To improve the industrial climate of our state we have first decided to improve our infrastructure. No roadmap of industrial development is complete without the road. For the last two and a half years roads are being constructed in my state with an average of 18 Km per day. So far we have made 17000 Km of roads and by 2008, about 40,000 Km of roads will be laid. We know that the red carpet spread over with patholes for the industries and investors seriously erodes the credibility of the government. And as regards electricity. God Almighty said, "let there be light", and it became bright. But in physical world of ours the gestation period in this sectors is far much longer. Fortunately, now this period is over. Today we ensure an uninterrupted supply of quality power to industries.



Approximately 3600 MW Projects are in the process of development at various stages. To attract industries to Madhya Pradesh, we have made radical changes in the Captive Power Policy, but we do know that industries do not evolve like islands. And with this in view, we are also trying to improve the power situation for the communities in the vicinity of the industries as well. Our efforts have started bearing fruit. Gone are the days when there were power riots. We have made endeavours to complete the old projects before time and laying the foundations of new production units. As regards water, we have started, the first of its kind in the country, the B.O.T. based project in Dewas to supply water from the Narmada river to industries at an affordable cost.
Whenever, I talk about our industrial promotion policy, I want to make it clear that I do not prefer the bureaucratic mandate over the market wisdom or the aspirations of the consumers. We brought the new industrial promotion policy in 2004 and we are open to update it regularly.
I have a deeper faith in the strong possibilities and potential of Madhya Pradesh even than upon myself. For the last few years, we have regularly won the prizes for agriculture production. So I am hopeful, that a new era of Agro processing will dawn upon Madhya Pradesh, and to exploit that stage we have established some Agro Parks and also have set up the Agriculture Export Zones. The dynamism of Madhya Pradesh also manifests from the fact that we were the first state to have the frontier technology like fibre optics; we were the first state to initiate private participation in infrastructure projects. But we do not want to relegate infrastructure to a lower priority for any other sector. We are also provisioning maximum government support to the infrastructure. This year, we have increased the budget provision for roads by 103 percent, for electricity by 70 percent and irrigation by 100 percent. Our not taking the private sector as a via-media for budgetary escapism in the field of infrastructure, would be very evident. The reason for my self-confidence emanates from the fact that there was a revenue surplus budget after 13 years and after long years we have not experienced a situation of overdraft even for a single day. We people are continuously strengthening the foundations of our economy.
We want to create an investor friendly environment for the investment in the state. We have developed a concept of more effective "Single Table" concept in place of "Single Window". A Project clearance and Implementation Board has been set up headed by the state's Chief Secretary where projects are approved within 15 days and the entrepreneurs have an opportunity to sit across the table for providing clarifications, if required. An apex committee has been constituted under my chairmanship for clearance and for granting customized package of concessions to mega projects. This committee has the powers at par with the economic affairs committee of the cabinet.


Industrial peace
Industrial peace is one of the strengths attracting investment in the state. For the last many years, the man-day losses due to labour unrest has been zero in the state. We have amended labour laws and made them investor friendly and this is an ongoing process.
Improved infrastructure and our investor friendly policy is attracting huge investments. Today, we have investment proposals for more than Rs. 100,000 crore for the state in the sectors of power generation, petrochemicals, textiles, automobiles, auto components, engineering and minerals, agro processing, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, etc. Out of this, the projects investing approximately
Rs 30,000 crore have gone to the ground from drawing boards. According to a report of TATA services, from the view of implementation, Madhya Pradesh is on the top with the project implementation ratio of 72 percent . We do, what we profess. On this very belief, I am here to invite you to Madhya Pradesh.



Please do not come to Madhya Pradesh because of our emotional or nostalgic appeal of brain-gain. Come to Madhya Pradesh because, it is a profitable proposition. Yes, it is a separate issue that stock market expert L. Fisher does not like to see profit only as earnings per share or net assets per share and to some extent I am also in agreement with that. But even on that basis, the fresh report of CMIE tells that the sales-to-expenses ratio of the companies working in Madhya Pradesh is the best not only among the North Indian states but it is much better than the national average.