Despite just over 30 per cent of investments pledged during the previous two editions have been realised so far, the Tamil Nadu government on Wednesday announced that the third edition of the Global Investors’ Meet (GIM) will be organized by the end of 2023 as the state gears up to turn into a USD 1 trillion economy by 2030.
In a statement made under Rule 110 in the Assembly on his recent visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Chief Minister M K Stalin said the state signed 14 Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) worth Rs 6,100 crores generating employment for 15,100 people.
“These investments will come into Tamil Nadu because of my visit to the UAE. My visit was aimed at garnering more investments to Tamil Nadu and generating jobs for our youth,” Stalin told the Assembly, dismissing accusations by opposition parties that his UAE trip was in the “interests of his family, and not the state.”
Stalin said the state has signed 130 MoUs with various companies worth Rs 68,375 crore generating 2 lakh jobs after the DMK government came to power in May 2021. The Chief Minister said the government organized three investors' conferences in Chennai, Coimbatore, and Thoothukudi in the past 10 months as part of its efforts to decentralize development and investments coming into Tamil Nadu.
He also announced that the state government was preparing itself to participate in global events to get more investments to the state. “To top all our efforts, I announce that the government will hold a Global Investors’ Meet by the end of 2023,” Stalin said, adding that FDI into the state increased by 41.5 per cent between April and December 2021.
While occupying opposition benches in the Tamil Nadu Assembly, DMK was quite critical of the first two editions of GIM conducted by the previous AIADMK government in 2015 and 2019 on the count majority of the investments pledged during such summits are not realised.
In 2019, Stalin, then the Leader of Opposition, had demanded a White Paper on the status of investments pledged during the second edition of GIM held in January that year.
A recent reply from the Tamil Nadu government to an RTI application said only Rs 65,486 crore of the total Rs 2,42,160 crore pledged during the 1st edition of GIM (2015) was realised generating employment to 1.80 lakh people as against the promised 4.70 lakh. The reply also said investments worth Rs 1.18 lakh crore of the Rs 3 lakh core pledged during the second edition of GIM (2019) have been realised so far providing jobs to 1.03 lakh people against the promised figure of 10.50 lakh.
The RTI reply also mentioned that of the Rs 56,230 crore investments pledged in the first two editions of the investors’ conference, only Rs 211 crore has been pledged (the MoUs were only signed in July and November 2021).
K E Raghunathan, Convenor, Consortium of Indian Associations (CIA), told DH that Tamil Nadu should come up with a “new ideas” to attract fresh investments instead of doing the same event again. After the pandemic, he said, the need is to go to where the business houses are and woo the investors.
“We should hold Make in Tamil Nadu summits in select countries hard-selling the state like done in Dubai. The government should organize exclusive conferences for each sector. To get fresh investments in the semiconductor sector, they should hold an event in Taiwan and explain what incentives they will get by coming to TN. We should go where the business, market, and investors are, especially at a time when all State Governments are conducting GIM,” Raghunathan said.
He said the yield is “very low” in GIMs while stressing that the state should show how different and competitive it is from other states by holding special events in foreign countries.