Chandigarh: The ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) Friday said its Progressive Punjab Investors’ Summit has drawn investment commitments worth Rs 10,000 crore on its first day. Organised in Mohali, this is the second such summit in Punjab for top investors in the country and abroad organised by AAP since it came to power in the state in March 2022.
Attended by 130 CEOs of industries, the three-day investors’ summit will have multiple sessions, site visits and cultural evenings.
Speaking at the event, Arvind Kejriwal, AAP national convener, said India should be competing with China because it was a nation that had captured international markets through its export products. “We should work towards making India an exporter of products to China and not the other way round,” he said.
Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann said Punjab offers a robust investment ecosystem with reasonable power tariffs, land availability and a welcoming environment for investors. “Due to the strenuous efforts of the Punjab government, Punjab has become the first state to pass the Right to Business Act,” said Mann.
“The Punjab Industrial and Business Development Policy-2026 will provide major incentives to investors, create employment opportunities for youth, empower women and support entrepreneurs in starting new businesses,” he said at the investors’ summit.
The Mann government has claimed it has already attracted investment proposals worth more than Rs 1,55,000 crore since they came to power in March 2022, creating employment opportunities for over 5 lakh young people.
One of the biggest investments pledged at the summit was Rs 2,600 crore, by leading industrialist Lakshmi N. Mittal, executive chairman of ArcelorMittal.
Mittal Energy runs the Guru Gobind Singh Refinery in Bathinda. A joint venture with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd, the refinery was commissioned in 2012. The Bathinda refinery, said Mittal, was the only oil refinery in Punjab. Mittal Energy has already invested Rs 60,000 crore in Punjab, “the highest investment by any single company so far”, said Mittal at the investors’ summit.
Mittal said his company will expand the Bathinda refinery to establish a mega world-scale petro chemicals complex for fine chemical projects and downstream polypropylene industries. This will include the first bio ethanol plant in the country which will produce 10 crore litres of bio ethanol annually.
Mittal said that the Bathinda refinery, apart from supplying petrol, diesel and LPG to Punjab, also caters to neighbouring states. “Because of the current shortage of LPG, we have also increased our production by 3,000 tonnes per day,” he said.
He said the Punjab AAP government should make the most of the presence of the refinery and create a downstream ecosystem, like plastic processing, chemicals, packaging and textiles. He said he has been told that a downstream complex will be set up on 1,500 acres of land in Bathinda.
Mittal also said his company will set up 500 artificial intelligence driven petrol pumps in Punjab over the next few days, with the first pump coming up in Bathinda.
T. V. Narendran, CEO & Managing Director, Tata Steel, reiterated his company’s commitment to set up a steel plant with a scrap-based electric arc furnace. He said the project was envisaged just 2 years ago and nowhere in the country has a project moved so fast from planning to execution.
“We have been making steel for 100 years. Making steel is not new to us. But making steel the way we are planning to do here is new to us. We set up a recycling plant in Rohtak some years ago. And this project (in Punjab) is helping us move to make greener steel, cleaner steel in order to bring down the CO2 footprint. A large part of the energy that will be used in the plant here will be green energy and that will ensure that the CO2 footprint is 0.2 tonnes per tonne of steel which is lowest in the world.” said Narendran.
JSW Group Chairman Sajjan Jindal highlighted his deep Punjabi roots while announcing a major expansion of the group’s Rajpura plant in Punjab. He committed an investment of Rs 3,000 crore to enhance capacity in the steel sector at Rajpura. He noted that Punjab, traditionally renowned for its agricultural sector, is now emerging as a vibrant industrial hub.
Rajya Sabha MP Rajinder Gupta, Chairman Emeritus of the Trident Group, a conglomerate engaged in textiles, paper and chemicals said he was proud to belong to Punjab and was committed to pumping investment of Rs 5,000 crore in the next two years in the state vowing to hire 10,000 people, including 5,000 women. He was all praise for the state’s new industrial policy unveiled last week.
Hero Enterprises chairman Sunil Kant Munjal said that policies of a government are as good as the implementation and it was pertinent for the government to ensure that the timelines promised are followed. He said the entire system of the government will have to stand up and be counted to ensure that the robust policy that has been put in place delivers. He said while the government should focus on industry it should also look at agriculture both in terms of depleting water table and the soil condition. He said that the government should look at converting agri waste into industrial raw material.
Addressing a press conference following the inaugural ceremony, the chief minister said Punjab had phenomenal road connectivity, skilled labour and a conducive atmosphere of communal harmony that was attracting the biggest names in the industry to the state. He said industries from Japan, Korea and UK were collaborating with the state government for the three-day summit.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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