Two UP ministers pitch for attracting investments moving out of China

NEW DELHI: Two senior Uttar Pradesh ministers have said the Yogi government is working on attracting investments moving out of China to state of Uttar Pradesh in the post-Covid world.
“Many investors are looking at moving their manufacturing base from China to Uttar Pradesh,” UP’s Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprise and Investment Promotion, Sidharth Nath Singh told ET on Wednesday.

“Many such manufacturers from China and Brazil are in discussion with the UP government in this regard,” he told ET. UP’s Industries Minister Satish Mahana also said on Wednesday that the state government was working to attract investments out of China and another opportunity lies in starting domestic production of goods that India imports from China.

“To attract investments out of China, we first need to start producing things that we import from them,” Mahana said at a virtual conference organised by Confederation of Indian Industry on ‘Business Complexity in current scenario’.

The German-based footwear brand, Von Wellx, owned by Casa Everz Gmbh, on Tuesday announced the shifting of its entire shoe production business in China, with a capacity of over three million pairs annually, to India with an initial investment of Rs 110 crore and said a new manufacturing unit of a similar capacity will be set up in Agra.

“Due to stable and decisive leadership at the Centre and the state, UP is becoming an attractive destination for investment,” Singh told ET, referring to the move by Von Wellx.

“Many policy reforms have been undertaken by the Yogi government like labour reforms, logistics and warehousing reform and a few structural reforms in food processing, medical equipment, industrial parks, leather, textile, electronics and pharmaceutical are being undertaken,” Singh added.

Mahana said industrial growth directly impacts growth of the workforce associated with it and said that is what UP is striving for. “We are looking at a new normal in the wake of the Covid pandemic. In such a situation, our priority is handholding the current industries in the state to sustain themselves under current challenges."

He said 50 percent of new investments through the Investors Summit had already gone into commercial production pre-lockdown.

Last week, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath had formed a committee under Singh and Mahana to attract investments to UP from abroad in wake of the post-Covid situation.

The Ministers were given the brief to open a dialogue with companies which were looking to exit China and set up base elsewhere. The government has also decided to set up a helpdesk under senior IAS officer Navneet Sehgal to help companies from the European Union in this regard.