By IANS
Ahmedabad : The next edition of the state government-sponsored global investor meet, Vibrant Gujarat 2009, would have engineering and auto sectors on top of its focus here.
Official sources told IANS that though the 2009 event would have 16 focus sectors like the 2007 meet, the list of focus areas indicates a shift in the government’s priorities.
Mineral based industries come second after engineering and auto sectors in the priority list. Oil and gas, power, textiles and apparel, urban infrastructure, gems and jewellery, ports and related industries, pharmaceuticals, chemicals and petro-chemicals, health care, IT, biotechnology and food and agri-related business are the other prominent areas.
In 2007, food and agriculture business topped the list.
The officials added that the state government was planning to ensure more participation of international and domestic business houses in the 2009 meet than the previous event.
Gujarat would invite multinational corporations, leading international business and financial firms, international and national chambers of commerce and industry and foreign embassies in India in addition to domestic entrepreneurs and NRIs for the 2009 meet.
The investor meet is held once in two years.
Besides the leading Indian industrial and business houses, eight foreign delegations, including China, Singapore and Japan, were present in the 2007 event.
The first event was held in 2003, but dubbed as Navratri festival it was not held as an investor summit. In that event 76 memoranda of understanding (MoUs) of worth $14 billion were inked.
Since 2005, the event is called global investors’ meet. A total of 226 MoUs worth $20 billion were signed in the 2005 meet.
The 2007 meet attended by industry majors like Tata, Birla, Reliance, Shell, General Motors and ICICI resulted in signing of 675 MoUs of worth $152 billion.
However, the state has not revealed any data about how many MoUs have since been translated into concrete projects. The government claims that a majority of them will be implanted successfully.