Ahmedabad: The US business delegation of 127 individuals and 60 firms attending the Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2015 has plans to invest around $41 billion in the next 3-4 years in India. This has come out through an informal survey conducted by the US India Business Council (USIBC).
The acting president of USIBC, Diana Farrell, stated in an interview with Indian Express, “USIBC will bring the biggest delegation of US companies, three times the size of the one which came last year. The number that we have been talking about as a potential investment target in India is $41 billion, which has been identified by an informal sampling of our companies in the next 3-4 years, if the economic reforms that have been aspired to by the Prime Minister and by the government are fulfilled.”
She further added, “We found that the ease of doing business in Gujarat has been rated high by business heads owing to it being a power-surplus state and the commitment of the government here to engage in ‘problem solving' for investors.”
Farrell further revealed that the US firm Westinghhouse Electric Company, which builds and operates approximately one half of the world's operating nuclear plants, will also be seen in the summit. Apart from them, senior officials of companies in defence sector like Boeing, Lockheed, Textron will also be here.
“Amongst the traditional technology companies, Ford Abbott, Dow Chemicals, General Motors, Peabody Energy and Cairn Energy will also be a part of the summit,” she said.
“While the representatives of the bigger companies will grow familiarity with Gujarat's CM Anandiben Patel and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the smaller ones will look for partnership with potential ventures in Gujarat and elsewhere.”
She also told that there are no immediate deliverables in the summit however, this meeting is to recognize the importance of Gujarat and acknowledge and continue relationships with the ministers including the Prime Minister.
Arun Kumar, Director-General of the US & Foreign Commercial Service and Assistant Secretary for Global Markets, US Department of Commerce, who was in the city on Saturday, also underlined the need to scale up business ties between US and India during the summit. “We are working on a number of things for the President's (Obama) visit. Today, we have a two-way trade of about a hundred billion USD between India and the US, while it is 500 billion USD with China, so a lot needs to be done. We are at a state where the US and Indian government are working very hard on the commercial aspects of our dialogue, which is one of our oldest dialogues and we will continue to intensify those dialogues,” Kumar said.
Reportedly, on the first day of the Vibrant Gujarat Summit 30-odd memorandum of understandings (MoUs) were signed which included a solar photovoltaic manufacturing cluster by Adani Enterprises costing about Rs 25,000 crore.
And among the investment promises made, Reliance India Limited's announcement to invest 100,000 crore in next 12-18 months in Gujarat was the biggest.
