The Hindu Business Line : Assam woos Thailand investors

Guwahati June 26 Endowed with a cornucopia of natural resources and bordering on neighbouring countries, the North Eastern Region (NER) has emerged as a focus point for investors. In a development of sort, Thailand is the first country in the East Asian region to realise the potential significance of sub-regional cooperation even as it is forging free trade areas at a frenetic pace with various countries.

Accompanied by a high-level business delegation, the Commerce Minister of Thailand, Mr Krirk-Krai Jirapaet, visited three States' capital in the NER, viz., Agartala, Guwahati and Shillong for three days last weekend before he joined his premier in New Delhi on Monday, who is on an official visit to India.

Thailand has emerged as a major investor in India as it is the third largest investor from the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region after Singapore and Malaysia.

At Guwahati, Mr Jirapaet, who took part in an interactive session with business leaders of Assam on June 23, was given a presentation on the State's potential for attracting investment in thrust areas by the Minister of Power, Public Enterprises & Industry, Mr Pradyut Bordoloi, in the presence of the State Chief Minister, Mr Tarun Gogoi.

Later, Business Line caught up with both the Chief Minister and the Industry Minister for an update on their plans for hard-selling the State as an attractive investor destination for foreign nations.

On his plans for industrialisation of Assam and his interaction with the Thailand Commerce Minister, Mr Tarun Gogoi said: "Assam today offers immense opportunities for economic engagement with Thailand and the areas for such cooperation and investment collaboration include power, oil and natural gas, tea industry — marketing part and not production part, bio-fuels and of course tourism, horticulture and food processing.

Thailand has unquestionable expertise in tourism as it attracts 11 million tourists a year and we want to tie-up with that country and they also showed interests in promoting tourism and food processing sector.

Industrial development and economic development and reforms are our priority.

On problems of insurgencies

I want to tackle these problems through industrialisation, economic development and raising the income of the people. With the Centre's North East Industrial and Investment Promotion Policy (NEIIPP) offering a set of incentives including neutrality of locations, exemptions from income tax and excise duty, capital investment subsidy and the State's own new initiative to get engaged with foreign country to attract foreign direct investment into the region, I am quite confident that a lot of industries will come to Assam."

Mr Pradyut Bordoloi said: "In my presentation to the Thai business delegation, I touched upon thrust areas including roads, air connectivity, infrastructure and agriculture. For foreign companies looking for investment opportunities, I have given them an impression as to which of the areas the FDI is welcome.

For instance, in the power sector, conventional hydro projects are put up in hilly areas. Assam is a flat land except for two hilly districts. We have Bramhaputhra and 20 to 25 tributaries are going down from the upper reaches of the Himalayas.

"Hydro projects are not done, according to my conviction, in a run of the water project, but by using a new technology, electricity could be generated from the currents of the water. Brazil has done it in Amazon and Rio and South Korea has this technology using a specialised turbine system. You don't have to have a dam for this and we need investment and this technology."

"We have acute unemployment problem in rural areas — we don't have private sector whatsoever and government sector has very limited capacity. The Government is not a factory churning out jobs but likes to be a facilitator for investment and industry to be set up by undertaking certain things like connectivity and infrastructure and we are systematically proceeding on this."

"Earlier, peace was a precondition for development but peace has been elusive for 50 years and so we have decided to shift the paradigm — bring development before peace and peace will automatically follow and this is what we are trying to do."

More Stories on : Foreign Trade | Outlook | Other States

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page