The Global Investors Meet (GIM) was held in June, 2000 in Bangalore amidst much fanfare. The world's business fraternity descended onto the city with proposals for investment in sectors as wide ranging as IT and biotechnology to food processing and tourism. A year later, here is what finally materialised from the meet.

At a press conference held in Bangalore, the details of the follow-up to the GIM were provided by R L
Deshpande, Minister for Large and Medium Scale Industries. Bureaucrats B S Patil and G Gurucharan were also present on the panel.

Deshpande informed the gathering that the Government of Karnataka and the CII plan to hold the India Partnership Summit 2002 in January 10-12, which again would present an opportunity to Karnataka to invite investments to the state.

The minister said, “Tourism has a large potential and the tourism ministry is working towards boosting it. The govt has set up a sub-committee to look into all aspects of tourism in Karnataka. The HUDCO will raise Rs 100 crore for promoting tourism. He clarified the role of the government in business, saying, “No project will be started by the state government. All initiatives will be private and the government will only set up the infrastructure for business.”

A gist of the information presented by the minister:

Sl no	Status	No of projects	Invetsment (Rs cr)
A	Total projects	47	23081.72
B	Commissioned	1	108.10
C	In progress	12	7578.00
D	Approval Stage	33	14914.62
E	Suspended	-	-
F	Dropped	1	481.00

 

	Karnataka	India
Growth rate in GDP (2000-2001)	6.20%	6.00%
Growth rate in industrial sector (overall)	7.70%	6.60%
Growth rate in electricity generation	5.77%	6.60%
Growth rate in manufacturing sector	8.10%	7.10%
Growth rate in mining sector	4.98%	1.00%

G Gurucharan said that about 38 per cent of the investment anticipated at the GIM has been commissioned or implemented. Also, 44 per cent (which is 112 of 254 cleared projects) are under way. Secondly, the investments are in companies that are spread over several sectors that are as diverse as food and biotechnology. Getting such a spread of investments within a year is good performance.

He added that the aim of the GIM was to showcase Karnataka as an important destination for investment and this objective had been fulfilled.

Gurucharan said, “Karnataka is still the most preferred destination for IT, biotechnology, food processing and related sectors." However, he admitted that the recent, global economic setback has had an impact. "Yes, the impact of the slowdown has been felt and some projects have been dropped," he said.