Vibrant Gujarat 2013

Lofty investment promises were missing even as captains of the industry and a battery of foreign diplomats queued up to hail Gujarat’s economic progress when the sixth edition of the two-day Vibrant Gujarat business summit started at Mahatma Mandir.

Apart from top tycoons, several foreign dignitaries, including Japanese ambassador to India Takashi Yagi, Canadian high commissioner Stuart Beck and UK high commissioner James Bevan were present. While most industry captains praised Modi, the most lavish praise came from Anil Ambani, who placed Modi on the same pedestal as Mahatma Gandhi, Sardar Patel and Dhirubhai Ambani as a visionary. He called Modi as “king of kings”. Ratan Tata, who became a star attraction at the 2009 Vibrant Gujarat summit for bringing Nano car to Gujarat from West Bengal, said, Gujarat stands out, and for this the credit goes to Narendra Modi for “setting high standards” for investment.
Shashi Ruia of Essar, whose company has been forced to pay thousands of crores as sales tax dues to Gujarat government, also referred to “Modi’s vision and unparalleled leadership”. Most tycoons confined their focus on what they called “the entrepreneurial spirit of Gujarat” which was not new to the state. In fact, speaking of the great strides made by Gujarat in the past, General Motors’ Lowell C Paddock recalled how Halol, where the GM plant came up decades ago, was connected with a “high-speed highway” with Vadodara. “Earlier, it took four hours to reach Vadodara but after the highway it takes just half-an-hour,” he said.

Mukesh Ambani of the Reliance Industries said his company will invest Rs 100,000 crore over the next five years and will mainly focus on expansion in Jamnagar, Hazira and Dahej, apart from setting up a higher education hub.
Essar chairman Shashi Ruia said his company was proposing to invest Rs 14,000 crore — Rs 10,000 crore in ports sector at Hazira and Salaya, and Rs 4,000 crore in bulk water supply.
Contrary to earlier summits when at least two leading industrialists said Modi was fit for PM’s post, this time around only Gautam Adani wished that Modi, armed with his “able leadership”, should go “up north”.
The only other person who expressed a similar wish was Konstantin Makarelov, vice-governor of the tiny Astrakhan province of the Russian Federation, saying that he hoped Modi will win the “next general elections”.