Chief Minister Vijay Rupani on Tuesday said that over 400 companies that have signed Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) worth Rs 1.11 lakh crore with the Gujarat government during the nine edition of the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summits, organised since 2003, will commence work on their proposed investment projects by March 2019. The CM’s announcement at an unscheduled press meet came amid criticisms that very little work has been done on the ground even as the BJP government has been patting its back on the signed MoUs. “Many opponents do not believe Vibrant Gujarat and keep on repeating themselves like an old audio-cassette that MoUs disappear and only hollow talks are being done during Vibrant (Summits). And therefore, the Gujarat government has decided that by the end of this financial year in March, work on investments worth Rs 1.11 lakh crore will commence. It could be ground-breaking event, inauguration, beginning of work or starting of the production,” the CM added. Rupani, however, did not give out the details about the projects that he was referring to — like the estimated amount of employment likely to be generate or the top five industries that will be commencing its work by March 30. He said that more details would be “provided at an appropriate time. The latest edition — ninth — of the Vibrant Gujarat Summit concluded last Sunday. The government had announced that during the three-day biennial investment summit, it signed 28,360 MoUs, which would generate over 21 lakh jobs. Later, an official release issued by the Chief Minister’s Office stated that the announcement includes around 464 projects in sectors like agro & food processing (14); dairy, fisheries & cooperation (20); chemical, petrochemical and GIDC (30); automobile & engineering (32), healthcare & pharmaceuticals (59); Information Technology (26); mineral-based projects (21); MSMEs (161); port & port-based (7); renewable rnergy, oil & gas (5); textile & apparel (9), housing & urban infrastructure (11), among others. The CMO also released a list of 27 major companies and their projects. Stating that the Vibrant summits are “propelling development in Gujarat”, Rupani referred to a recent report published by a private rating agency that has ranked the state as number one in different parameters of development. Rupani said that the rating agency has acknowledged the top performance of Gujarat in terms of Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), fiscal deficit, controlling inflation etc. between 2013 and 2017. At the concluding ceremony of the latest edition of the event, the CM had said that the biennial event has “become a platform for social upliftment rather than only for business and trade”. He had said that Gujarat has become a preferred investment destination after 2003 when Narendra Modi as the CM decided to organise the business meet.
