Addressing the inaugural session of GIS 2016 in Indore, Chouhan said since the 2014 GIS Madhya Pradesh had attracted investment of ₹ 2.75 trillion. “Of this manufacturing has started at 110 plants worth Rs. 50,000 crore. Around 175 food processing units and 92 renewable energy plants have been set up since 2014," Chouhan said.

Chouhan was responding to questions about the actual impact of Global Investors’ Summit. Chouhan said when the event was started in 2007, Madhya Pradesh struggled to get investors to sign up for GIS. “People asked where is Madhya Pradesh. No one had heard of Madhya Pradesh, not to mention its investment credentials. Barely 300 people participated in 2007. We have turned it around since then. This year, we had to stop registration for GIS when we had received 8,000 confirmations," Chouhan said.

The chief minister listed out four major achievements since the Bharatiya Janata Party won Madhya Pradesh in 2003: double digit growth rate for the last 7 years; agriculture growth rate at 20% for the last four years; a quantum leap in power generation from only 2900 megawatt to 18000 MW in 2016; more than five-fold increase in cultivable land under irrigation from 7.5 lakh hectares in 2003 to 4 million hectares in 2016.

“The GIS has not been a ritual or an event for us. We have stopped the practice of signing up of MoUs because they are pieces of paper. The GIS for us is a demonstration of Madhya Pradesh as India’s most complete investment destination," Chouhan said. He read out a long list of investment commitments made at the previous investors’ meets including several proposals that were approved online under the state government’s first-of-its-kind online approval system.

Speaking earlier, Madhya Pradesh chief secretary Anthony Disa said between the two GIS gatherings in 2014 and 2016, Madhya Pradesh had achieved so much to justify its global outreach to woo investors. Even between the GIS in 2012 and 2014, Madhya Pradesh had recorded “actualised investment" of ₹ 1.62 trillion, Disa said.

In 2015, the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion along with the World Bank ranked Madhya Pradesh as one of the top five Indian states on the Ease of Doing Business indices, Disa said. Also, an Ambit Capital Study in May 2015 described Madhya Pradesh as “the best performing state", he added. Disa pointed out that Madhya Pradesh had won accolades for the health of its public finances.

“The burden of interest on state debt has come down from 22% of revenue receipts in 2004-05 to 8% now. Thanks to our thrust on actual irrigation, we have been able to reserve 900 million cubic metres of water exclusively for industrial use. Between 2014 and 2016, we have added 5400 MW of installed capacity and our total capacity of 18000 MW has 3175 MW from renewables," Disa said.

Since 2014, Madhya Pradesh has built 4,200km length of highways and 10,000km of rural roads at a total investment of ₹ 33,000 crore, he added. The state has an industrial land bank of 1.2 lakh acres of which 40,000 acres is developed, he said.

To help the state establish an agriculture supply chain, warehousing capacity of 9 million metric tonnes has been added since 2013 taking the overall warehousing strength to 18 million tonnes Disa pointed out that one third of this capacity addition has been achieved through private investment and another one third through the public private partnership model.

The public sector has added another one third, he said. He said the introduction of goods and services tax (GST) would benefit Madhya Pradesh most as the state was home to “catchment area of 50% of India’s population".

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