PROMISES NEED TO BE FULFILLED

In the recently concluded investor summit in Lucknow, Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government has signed ` 4.28 lakh crore worth Memorandum of Understandings (MoUs) – equal to the state’s budget for 2018/19. India’s business barons promised investments in telecom and IT, manufacturing and infrastructure. The same league had promised huge investments in Maharashtra (` 12.10 lakh crore), West Bengal (` 2.19 lakh crore) and Andhra Pradesh (`4.39 lakh crore), earlier. The trend of investment summits began when Narendra Modi was Gujarat’s CM and promoted ‘Vibrant Gujarat’ as an opportunity for the business community to garner investment support in a bullish economy where private firms were desperate for locations to start their plants. The result – high net realisation of MoUs at around 60 per cent; that has now fallen to 20-30 per cent in many states. The private sector is also quite pessimistic about new investments, especially when banks show renewed reluctance after rising stressed assets and scams. In many cases, investment promises are just projections based on demand estimates.