Courtsey news via Indo-Asian News Service, January 12, 2011
Gandhinagar : From an event to garner investments for the state to an international platform for global business investments, the fifth Vibrant Gujarat Global Investors' Summit 2011 begins Wednesday with participants from 30 MNCs and 16 countries.
The two-day biennial event, which will be inaugurated by Chief Minister Narendra Modi, is being held at the new Mahatma Mandir erected at a cost of over Rs. 100 crore in this state capital.
Representatives from nearly 30 MNCs, 16 countries and 19 Indian states will showcasing their wares and participate in a broadsweep of workshops and seminars to discuss investment opportunities.
The new convention centre, spread across a 60,000 sq metre area, has a seating capacity of 5,000.
The theme of this year's event is to make Gujarat a "Global Business Hub", an official spokesperson said.
With Japan and Canada as country partners and multi-national and Indian corporate heads marking their attendance, the summit will have 18 focused areas. They include chemicals and petrochemicals, engineering and automobiles, environment technology, financial services, agro and food processing, gems and jewellery, healthcare, knowledge, mines and minerals, ports and shipbuilding and related industries, tourism and urban development.
All these sectors will be covered through seminars.
The tone for the main event was set with a line-up of events beginning Monday when the five-day International Kite Festival was flagged off on the Sabarmati riverfront in Ahmedabad.
Later in the evening, Modi also inaugurated a mega-exhibition in Gandhinagar, called the Global Manufacturing Technology Show (GMTS) to provide a platform to the Small and Medium Enterprise (SME) sector.
Around 200 companies, 16 countries and 19 states are participating in GMTS, which ends Jan 18.
According to officials engaged in the planning and execution of the summit, the Gujarat government is pulling out all stops to better its record of memorandums of understanding (MOUs) worth Rs.12 lakh crore that were inked during the previous investor summit held at Ahmedabad in 2009.
According to sources, MOUs worth Rs.20 lakh crore are expected to be signed at the summit this year. The signing spree began Monday with 74 MoUs being signed at the round-table of academic institutions.
Delegates from 25 universities of nine countries discussed the possibilities of educational collaboration and exchange programmes.
