Naidu hard sells AP

Created On: 5 Nov 2015 6:55 AM IST

The World Economic Forum\'s India summit here on Wednesday saw Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu exploiting the opportunity fully, while his Telangana counterpart K Chandrashekar Rao giving it a slip. In the absence of any competition from the neighbouring Telugu state, Naidu set out with his developmental agenda positioning AP as the destination state for all investments.

KCR skips WEF summit

New Delhi: The World Economic Forum's India summit here on Wednesday saw Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu exploiting the opportunity fully, while his Telangana counterpart K Chandrashekar Rao giving it a slip. In the absence of any competition from the neighbouring Telugu state, Naidu set out with his developmental agenda positioning AP as the destination state for all investments.

His priority was Aerospace and Defence sector investments that are very much on the radar of Telangana too. The Telangana government too has been active in wooing investments in these fields citing defence-related industries already existing in and around Hyderabad and the skill potential of the Telangana youth.

The opportunity to boost the image and potential of Andhra Pradesh was not let go by Naidu who made it a point to detail his plans even during the lunch time to the delegates who shared his luncheon table. In fact, the forum divided the eighteen speakers - valuable guests - into two groups of nine each spread across two tables.

Disclosing this to the media, Advisor to AP Chief Minister (Media) Parakala Prabhakar and Special Representative of the AP Government at New Delhi K Ramamohan Rao said ‘here that the programme would enable the government to conduct systematic assessment of strengths and weaknesses of Andhra Pradesh’s economy using the Global Competitiveness Index (GCI) methodology.

The assessment would further enable evidence-based, data-driven policy-making in Andhra Pradesh. It would provide important data for the design of policies and reforms and allow comparison with other economies of similar size or at a similar stage of development, the objective being repeating the exercise on regular basis to monitor progress of AP economy. (The WEF's GCI methodology measures set of factors and policies that together determine economy’s level of productivity and its ability to prosper).

The assessment would be based on the performance in 12 categories called the “pillars of competitiveness”: Institutions, Infrastructure, Macroeconomic stability; Health and primary education, Higher Education and training, Goods market efficiency, labour market efficiency, financial sector development, financial sector development, technological readiness, market size, business sophistication, and innovation.

World Economic Forum’s role in the collaboration would consist sharing of tools, providing technical support and training selected staff of the government

The Policy Advisory Group of World Economic Forum gave a presentation to the CM on making Andhra Pradesh a hub for Aerospace and Defense Industries. Members of the group appraised the CM that 12 to 13 out of the 30 Big Aerospace and Defence industries such as GE, Boeing and Airbus etc., were keen to invest in Andhra Pradesh considering the resources and skill available in Andhra Pradesh and as AP was ranked no.2 in the World Bank's ease of doing business report in the country and had the potential to become no.1 in the next 2-3 years.

The Chief Minister had participated in the session on ‘Growing Cities, Building Resilience - challenges in Urbanization and explained the urban transformation taking place or being planned in Andhra Pradesh and about building the Green Field capital city Amaravati. The delegates expressed keen interest in the concepts of 'Walk to work', 'Cycle to work' and Water taxis to work which were being planned for Amaravati. Delegates expressed their belief that Amaravati would set the benchmark for urban development for the world in future.

The Chief Minister, earlier, reviewed the proposals for biotechnology opportunities at a review meeting of Science and Technology with its top officials.