The state signed MoUs with 14 companies in 2024 to start 18 projects in Telangana. Of them, 10 projects are in various stages of execution. Others are in the "active" stage.
Published Jan 29, 2025 | 4:30 PM ⚊ Updated Jan 29, 2025 | 7:23 PM
Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy explains about the MoUs signed at Davos at a news conference in Hyderabad.
Telangana Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy and his team triumphally returned to Hyderabad from the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos last week to a hero’s welcome.
There were enough reasons to make them proud. The state, they said, had won investment promises to the tune of ₹1.82 lakh crore, which would translate to jobs for 49,500 youths.
The scenes at the airport were familiar since they keep repeating every year whenever the state delegation returns from the WEF in the Alpine town.
However, questions remain unanswered. How many of the promises — MoUs signed — become a reality in the state?
The investment commitments made to Telangana recently at Singapore, Zurich, and Davos included big-ticket projects like ₹60,000 crore by Amazon (AWS), ₹45,000 core by Sun Petrochemicals, and ₹15,000 crore each by Tillman Global Holdings and Megha Engineering.
The software majors whose investments would offer employment included HCL (5,000 jobs), Infosys (17,000), and Wipro (5,000). The other areas where investments were promised included solar cells, rocket manufacturing, aircraft interior design, and UAV manufacturing.
Revanth Reddy and Industries Minister D Sridhar Babu spoke highly about their achievements at the WEF, especially on the huge interest investors had shown in Telangana.
The chief minister claimed that the flood of investment commitments was the result of the government’s clean energy and industrial policies.
But how much of it would turn into investment, contributing to the state’s finances in the form of taxes and providing employment to the unemployed youth?
“The engagement is over. Now, we have to get ready for the wedding,” Revanth Reddy was upbeat while addressing a news conference on Tuesday, 28 January.
By Sridhar Babu’s admission, the strike rate was over 50 percent of ₹40,242 crore commitments made at Davos in 2024.
He said that the state signed MoUs with 14 companies in 2024 to start 18 projects in Telangana. Of them, 10 projects were in various stages of execution. Others were in the “active” stage, which meant that the officials were still following them up with the companies.
In a nutshell, the projects promised were either in the pipeline or grounded but none of them has been commissioned.
“There were issues relating to allotting land to Godrej. Our officials are resolving the issue by interacting with the company representatives. We hope that it will be through soon,” the industries minister said.
Some of the major commitments made in 2024 had not come through. For instance, Adani Pump Storage. Adani Green Energy had promised to set up a 1.35 GW pumped storage project. The investment was expected to be about ₹5,000 crore.
A pumped storage project is a facility that stores energy by moving water between two reservoirs at different elevations. The water is pumped from the lower reservoir to the upper reservoir when there is excess power and then released back to the lower reservoir when the demand increases.
Additional agreements from Adani included a ₹1,400 crore data center campus, a ₹1,000 crore aerospace and defense park, and an Ambuja Cement plant.
In 2024, investment commitments also came from JSW, Web Werks, Tata Technologies, BL Agro, Surgical Instruments Group Holdings, Godi Energy, Aragen Life Sciences, Innovare Pharmaceuticals, Q-Centrio, Systra, Uber, and O9 Solutions.
JSW Neo Energy had announced a ₹9,000 crore investment for a 1,500 MW pumped storage power project and Godi India signed an ₹8,000 crore agreement for an R&D and giga-scale battery cell manufacturing unit, intending to develop lithium and sodium-ion battery technologies over five years.
But most of them are still in the works.
Amid all euphoria over promises, Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka was candid. He said an MoU was an expression of interest and a lot has to take place subsequently for the investments to materialise.
Similarly, Sridhar Babu, too, said success could be claimed only when an MoU translated into investments. Both statements armed the Opposition BRS to target the ruling Congress.
BRS leader T Harish Rao wanted an explanation. He wanted to know who was speaking the truth: Vikramarka or the chief minister.
Another BRS leader and former Congress minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah said Sridhar Babu’s admission that it would take time for the MoUs to translate into reality revealed that the Congress’s claims of achievements were just hot air.
Lakshamaiah did not forget to claim credit for the BRS. He said the industrial policies of the previous BRS government, still in force in the state, were making investors interested in Telangana.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
