V Narayanasamy, Chief Minister of Puducherry assured entrepreneurs here that the Union Territory is endowed with the best industrial climate for investment.

Delivering the chief guest address at the 2nd edition of Indian Business Congress at Le Meridien this morning, he highlighted the potential saying “be it land bank availability, skilled manpower, clean air, water or a peaceful environment for investment – Puducherry has it all.”

“If investments have to come, the State should be peaceful, it should be corruption-free, government should offer incentives and above all, the State should have a progressive industrial policy. But in India, bureaucracy is the biggest bottleneck for any development.”

He conceded that running an industry in this competitive and highly politicised atmosphere has been and is a huge challenge, before adding that the governmental support “is lacking in India, and the industrial climate and employment generation – not very encouraging.”

“What have we achieved by demonetisation?” Narayanasamy asked, averring that the purpose for which it was thrust upon — be it towards curbing black money or flushing out the (now) withdrawn notes from the hands of terrorists — could not be achieved.

“The achievement, on the other hand, was only in bringing down the country’s GDP by 2 per cent. And now with the roll out of GST, the growth is becoming even more stunted. Such ideas have been thrust without thinking,” the Puducherry Chief Minister said.

“Being a consuming State, Puducherry has been most impacted to the extent of 40 per cent. Industrial investments are not coming to the Union Territory because of this. But we have announced an industrial policy, won five awards in the last two years — for best administration, for maintaining law and order, tourism potential, organic farming and best industrial award as well. But for Kiran Bedi, we would have bagged more,” he said in lighter vein.

He did not deny that the cost of living and per capita income is high in the UT.

“With the government identifying Puducherry for Smart City project, we have started working on the same. We have started revamping the traffic system, widening the roads and many such initiatives, but sadly enough, the required funding is not coming from the Centre. We are however trying to overcome the bureaucratic menace,” he said.

Speaking on the sidelines of this event organised by the Entrepreneurs Council of India, Narayanasamy categorically stated that demonetisation was a wrong move. “In the aftermath, businesses have been impacted, real estate has taken a beating, there has been job loss, money in circulation has tightened. The industries are yet to overcome from the setback.”

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