The Rajasthan government has launched a drive across India and in some foreign countries to attract industry into the State, and has a target of clinching investments to the tune of ₹2 lakh crore through the initiative.
The State is also inviting participation in the Resurgent Rajasthan partnership summit slated to be held in Jaipur on November 19 and 20.
“We want to cross a target of ₹2 lakh crore,” Rajasthan cabinet minister Kiran Maheshwari said, adding that the focus areas include auto, auto ancillary, textile, ceramics, electronics system design and manufacturing (ESDM), solar component manufacturing, IT & ITeS, renewable energy, minerals, engineering, electrical agro-processing and knowledge city.
Maheshwari was speaking at a road show in Pune, the first of similar events it has planned in eight Indian cities. Kolkata is the next stop-over for the delegation, followed by road shows in Mumbai, Hyderabad, Delhi, Bengaluru, Indore, Chennai and Ludhiana.
The State is also making a pitch for investors in Singapore, Japan, UK and Germany.
On Wednesday, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje, currently on a visit to Japan, announced the second phase of Japanese Investment Zone (JIZ) on 500 acres of land. The first phase of the JIZ is located on 700 acres of land at Neemrana.
Rajasthan currently has 324 industrial development areas on 19,000 acres, and has an additional land bank of 9,000 hectares for industrial use, Maheshwari said.
The State is also working on labour reforms, reducing permissions for setting up industry and had planned to build 20,000 km of roads under the PPP model in fiscal 2015-16.
Amongst proposals it has received recently are two from Intex and Micromax together valued at total ₹1,500 crore to set up manufacturing bases.
In 2007, during Raje’s earlier tenure as Chief Minister, Rajasthan had signed MoUs for ₹1,62,000 crore investment.
Only 32 per cent of this had materialised, mainly because of the change in government. “So this time we have started early and have four years to see the projects through,” Maheshwari quipped.