Despite the ongoing economic slowdown, Tamil Nadu managed to post a healthy 12.5 per cent growth in 2011-12, as compared with the country’s GDP growth of 6.5 per cent.
This growth was driven predominantly by the State’s industry and services sectors, said Mr Subir Gokarn, Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India.
Delivering his inaugural address at a conference on ‘Vision Tamil Nadu’ organised here by the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India, he said the State’s industrial base is relatively well diversified, with competitiveness in both labour and capital-intensive sectors.
“Human capital is the fundamental source of this competitiveness,” he said.
However, he said industry’s share to the State’s GDP came down to 24.8 per cent in 2011-12 from 30.5 per cent in 2001-02.
This was more than compensated by the growth in the services sector, which rose to 65.8 per cent during the year from 52.8 per cent in 2001-02.
Earlier, Mr Rajkumar Dhoot, President, Assocham, said Tamil Nadu has emerged as a prime destination for both domestic and foreign investors.
But the State requires to do a lot more to facilitate these investments as only about 48 per cent of the investment projects attracted by the State are under implementation, over 42 per cent are at the MoU stages and over 9 per cent of the proposals have either been stalled or there is no information about the same. “It needs to see higher rate of completion of investment proposals to live up to its image of a lucrative investment destination in the country,” he said.