Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu has signed 665 MoUs (memorandum of understanding) worth Rs 10.25 lakh crore to create around 22 lakh jobs at the end of the two-day 7th Partnership Summit of CII on Saturday. Through this, he countered the Opposition demand that the Centre grant special status to AP as per the promises made at the time of the division of the combined state in 2014.
This is the second partnership summit of the CII (Confederation of Indian Industry) in the newly created AP and the value of the MoUs this time definitely surpassed the last time’s Rs 4 lakh crore. Naidu has worked round-the-clock to achieve this record mainly to counter the mounting Opposition chorus for agitation to achieve special status for the state.
The two-day summit inaugurated by Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the port city of Visakhapatnam on Friday drew around 3,000 delegates from 42 countries. Jaitley told the gathering that the Narendra Modi-led NDA government at the Centre would go “out of its way to help Andhra Pradesh” and that this state has always been “special to the Modi government”.
The presence of Jaitley at the summit clearly boosted the morale of the AP government, which is struggling to put up an image of an investor-friendly state in the country with a 10.99% GSDP last year. Union ministers M. Venkaiah Naidu and Nirmala Sitharaman, too, were present at the summit and marshalled their ministries in mobilising investments for AP.
If Jaitley had promised to “go the extra mile” to improve conditions in AP, Union Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari, too, came to the rescue of the state by promising to invest around Rs 26,000 crore from his ministry in the coming months. Of this, Rs 20,000 crore would be spent on coastal highways and Rs 6,000 crore on Visakhapatnam port roads.
Naidu’s focus was to attract investments in and around the newly created capital city, Amaravati, located between Vijayawada and Guntur and he succeeded in roping in around Rs 1.29 lakh crore worth 62 MoUs at the summit.
Gadkari has thrown in a surprise for the state by agreeing to take up 426 km long highways around Amaravati in association with CRDA (Capital Region Development Authority).
This summit has seen a flurry of activities as scores of investors vied to ink deals with the AP government so that they can be fast-tracked at the official level.
Private universities like SRM, VIT, Amity, Gitam, oil and gas companies, infrastructure firms, IT, energy giants came forward to set up shop across 13 districts of AP.
Talking to the media on the sidelines of the summit, CM Naidu said: “I am more than happy that we could sign these many MoUs which can create over two million jobs. I am sure a majority of the MoUs would be cleared and grounded within a year and we will follow them on a day-to-day basis. All this wouldn’t have been possible without the cooperation of PM Modi.”
This record number of MoUs and job figures have made Naidu happy as he was under attack from the Opposition parties for not being able to extract special status for AP which would have created millions of jobs to the youth and wooed investments.
This also helped the CM in projecting AP as a state on the recovery path within two years after the crippling split with Hyderabad that went to Telangana.