Claims on high rate of conversion of investment proposals questioned by Congress

A view of the second day of the winter session of the Karnataka legislative Assembly at Suvarna Vidhana Soudha in Belagavi on December 20, 2022.

The Opposition Congress in the Legislative Council questioned the claims of the BJP government in the State on the high rate of conversion of investment proposals made during the recent Global Investors’ Meet (GIM).

Raising the issue during Question Hour, M. Nagaraju pointed out that the GIM conducted by the BJP government during 2010 and 2012 did not have a conversion rate of more than 14% to 15% against the proposed investments. The Congress members alleged that the State is unlikely to receive as much investment as it spent on conducting the GIM during November this year in Bengaluru.

However, Minister for Large and Medium Scale Industries Murugesh Nirani pointed out that availability of land was one of the most important factors to attract investment and said State government had arranged for a land bank of more than 1.2 lakh acres to help realize the investment proposals made during GIM 2012.

But, soon after the Congress government came to power in 2013, the then Siddaramaiah government denotified about 1 lakh acres and blamed the poor rate of conversion to non-availability of land for the investors.

However, he said the government now has arranged for a land bank of 50,000 acres and 90% of the new investments will be made in Tier 2 cities.

The quantum of total capital investment due to flow to Karnataka from the GIM 2022 was ₹9.81 lakh crore and the State government was confident of converting more than 75 per cent of the investment proposals.