Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
CHANDIGARH, October 31: Reiterating that Akali-BJP government was lying about investments in Punjab, Congress Deputy Leader in the Lok Sabha Capt Amarinder Singh today dared the Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal to prove him wrong that the actual investment in the state during the last fiscal, 2014-15 was just Rs 2600 crores and not Rs 40,000 as claimed by them.
The former Chief Minister challenged the government to specify where exactly this amount of Rs 40,000 crores had been invested during the last one year after the previous investment summit, where it claimed that MOUs to the tune of Rs 65000 crores of investment had been signed.
“You don’t attract investments by merely organising a corporate ramp walk”, he told the government in a statement issued here today, while adding, “for that you need to build up the confidence of the investors which you have badly failed to do”.
Quoting the figures released by the Associated Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ASSOCHAM) a few months ago, Capt Amarinder pointed out that the rate of investment in the state had declined by 91 per cent since 2006-07 when he left the government.
He disclosed, while Rs 36000 crores had been invested in that year, (which comes to over Rs 50,000 crores now, after adjusting the inflation) the investment had come down to Rs 2600 crore now. “These are the publicly released figures by the leading industrial association of the country, the ASSOCHAM”, he asserted.
Capt Amarinder pointed out that immediately after the Akali-BJP government was formed in 2007, it scrapped 367 meg-projects with an investment commitment of over Rs one lakh crores and 13 lakh guaranteed jobs. “This was done with an outright intent of vindictiveness and vendetta”, he observed, while adding, since that day the investors lost faith and confidence in Punjab and consequences were before everybody.
Pointing out that about 20,000 existing industrial units had shut in the state, the former Chief Minister said, the Akali-BJP government had unleashed a double whammy on Punjab as on the one hand the existing industry was shutting down and moving out and on the other hand no new investors were prepared to come here as they had no faith in the rulers here.
