Vibrant Gujarat summit is being held in the state capital of Gandhinagar. PM Modi will address the event at about 5.20 pm. The audience of nearly 15,000 will include the Noble Prize winners, heads of foreign governments, Corporate India bosses including Mukesh Ambani, Ratan Tata and Anil Ambani, and the heads of internet giants like Flipkart. The Vibrant Gujarat summit will last four days.
In 2003, PM Modi (While Modi was the CM of Gujarat) launched the summit. The summit held once every two years. PM Modi successfully pitched Gujarat as the ideal destination for investment, promising minimal red-tape and manufacturing incentives.
The summit secured investment proposals of 366 billion dollars or 25 lakh crores in last time. As per the reports of Bloomberg that the Gujarat government pegs the conversion rate at almost 70 percent and some of biggest bussinesses of India including Reliance Industries Ltd. and the Adani Group said last month that they have fulfilled most of their commitments.
Gujarat state lost its top position in the ease-of-business rankings of Indian states in last year. The state fell to No 3 while Telangana and Andhra Pradesh were joint winners.
Other states, such as Maharashtra, has seen projects increase over the recent years. Maharashtra also attracted the most foreign direct investment — 30 per cent of India’s total between 2000-2016 — while Gujarat ranked fifth with 4 per cent.
Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said that dismissing the reports of economic disruption after the note ban, tax collection has increased substantially over last year. Jaitley said that in the first three quarters of the fiscal year that ends in March, overall indirect tax collections were up 25 percent from a year earlier. Direct tax receipts during the same period were up 12.01 percent year-on-year.
The Finance Minister and RBI Governor Urjit Patel are scheduled to address a session tomorrow on the landmark tax reform, the National Goods and Services Tax or GST, which has been stalled by the opposition and is unlikely to meet its planned rollout date of April 1.
On Monday, PM Modi inaugurated a new stock exchange in Gujarat which offers trading 22 hours a day. The International Exchange will trade a range of financial instruments, including equities, commodities and currency, in Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT), been created to spearhead India’s push to attract more foreign investment.
