PM Modi to inaugurate three-day UP Global Investors Summit 2023 on Friday

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will throw open the three-day UP Global Investors’ Summit (GIS) 2023, here on Friday. He is also scheduled to address a select group of industry captains on the sidelines of the event.

To prepare for the mega event, Lucknow has been given a facelift. The venue, ‘Vrindavan Yojana’ — spread over nearly 70 acres — will become the ground zero for showcasing ‘Brand UP’ to a galaxy of global and domestic industrialists, investors, and economic think-tanks.

UP has so far received investment proposals worth Rs 27 trillion from more than 18,000 companies across different sectors, while the government has already signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with a large number of corporations.

Indian marquee firms, who have committed to invest in UP as part of the GIS, include Reliance Industries, Tata Group, JK, etc, while global corporations betting on the state are Lulu Group, Seiko Advance, One World Corporation, Boson Energy, Embraer, Geothermal Core among others.

Compared with the Rs 4.68-trillion MoUs signed with over 1,000 companies during the UP Investors’ Summit in February 2018 five years back, the state’s kitty this time is five-fold and counting.

While Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will showcase “unlimited” investment potential in a slew of sectors, the state will also harness soft power in the form of music, cultural heritage, folk art forms, ancient history, cuisine and spiritual-religious traditions.

Although Gautam Adani is unlikely to attend the GIS, the group has committed to setting up four cement plants in the state, with the ground work on a proposed cement plant in Sonbhadra district already starting off, sources said.

Meanwhile, the UP government will hardsell its network of expressways, airports, inland waterways, metro rails, logistics hubs, dry ports and the upcoming freight corridors, Film City, Jewar and Ayodhya international airports as a testimony to its development blueprint.

In the run-up to the big ticket event, the state has roped in partner countries, including Denmark, Netherlands, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, and Mauritius.

The government held a series of roadshows in 16 countries apart from top Indian cities, which fetched the state investment proposals in varied sectors, including manufacturing, agriculture, textile, tourism, IT and electronics, data centres, food processing, logistics, renewable energy, etc.

The global roadshows held in December 2022 netted about Rs 7-trillion investment proposals to the state.

Meanwhile, the GIS venue, which played host to Defence Expo 2020, has been divided into seven blocks. The first block will host the inaugural ceremony to be attended by 10,000 people, including top notch industrialists and investors from every continent of the world.

Adjacent to this block are lounges for VIPs, partner countries and industry partners, including CII and FICCI. A food court to serve a range of local, national and international cuisine has also been established.

Another block will comprise four hangars, with a capacity to accommodate 250 people each, to organise different sessions simultaneously dedicated to distinct themes and departments.

A big media centre has been set up to telecast the event live. The fourth block will host cultural events, while the fifth will feature drone shows. The sixth has been prepared to host B2B meetings and the seventh comprising 11 halls will showcase themed exhibitions.

Prominent artistes, including Bhajan singer Hansraj Raghuvanshi and noted flautist Rakesh Chaurasia, will perform at the event.