Progressive Punjab Investor summit to be an annual feature: Sukhbir Singh Badal

AMRITSAR: Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal today said that the upcoming ' Progressive Punjab Investor Summit' at Mohali next week would be an annual feature as the state has received "tremendous response" from big industrial houses for investment.

Addressing reporters here, he said the investor summit would play a proactive role to boost up state's economy as more than 30 big companies from abroad have sent their proposals to sign MOUs with state government during Investors' meet worth Rs 50,000 crore, which would be implemented on ground in next six months.

As per the strength of the state in infrastructure and geographical situation, Punjab has indentified some preferred areas like Housing, Infrastructure and Renewable Energy, Biosciences and Healthcare, Information Technology, Agro and Food Processing and Textiles sectors for investment, he said.

He said the major industrial sector players, including Mukesh Ambani, L N Mittal, A M Naik, Malvinder Singh, Kiran Mazumdar Shaw and Sunil Kant Munjal, are expected to take part in Investor meet.

Replying to a query about the Property tax, he said that Congress-led UPA government has forced the state to impose the tax as they had stopped all grants, scheduled to be released under Jawahar Lal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission.

He announced that "if UPA government removes all the superfluous terms and conditions then Punjab Government would not take even a minute to withdraw property tax."

Referring to the all round development of Amritsar, he said that "we are already preparing the master plan, which I am personally looking into."

He said that keeping in view the religious, cultural and historical importance of the city, Amritsar would bear a new look in two year as it has a great potential to emerge strongly on the tourism and IT map across the country.