Published Aug 17, 2024 | 10:03 PM ⚊ Updated Aug 17, 2024 | 10:03 PM
There is much confusion regarding the CMO's announcement of a ₹1,000 crore investment in Telangana by Swachh Bio.
Telangana’s Information Technology and Industries Minister D Sridhar Babu on Saturday, 17 August, defended the state government signing an MoU with a company set up by Chief Minister A Revanth Reddy’s brother.
The Memorandum of Understanding was signed during the chief minister’s recent US tour.
Speaking to reporters at the state Secretariat in Hyderabad, Sridhar Babu wondered what was wrong if someone from Telangana, who has settled abroad, repays his gratitude by investing in his home state. “Whoever it is, we are not going to say ‘No’. The bottom line is how much the state would benefit from the investment,” he said.
The minister was responding to a query about the state signing the MoU with a less-than-a-year-old company, Swachch Bio, set up by the chief mister’s brother.
Sridhar Babu that Swachch Bio’s international partner, Suganit Biorenewables, has been in existence for long. “It has been in R&D for the last 18 years. They have a wonderful product. They work in the field of biofuels,” he said.
The BRS had slammed the Revanth Reddy government for signing the MoU with Swachch Bio, a company set by his brother Anumula Jagadeeswar Reddy. The MoU was signed on 6 August. The company expressed its interest in setting up a biofuel plant in the state with an investment of ₹1,000 crore. It had proposed setting up a plant with a capacity to produce 250 kilo-litres of biofuel.
“Exciting news! After a productive meeting with Chief Minister @revanth_anumula and Industries and IT Minister @OffDSB, Swachh Bio, a lignocellulosic biofuels manufacturing company, has announced plans for a 250 KLPD (Kilo Litres Per Day) biofuels plant in Telangana,” the CMO exclaimed on Tuesday, 6 August.
The CMO added that the investment would create 500 jobs, besides promoting sustainable growth in Telangana. But the BRS slammed Revanth Reddy after it discovered that Swachh Biogreen Private Limited, has been registered under the name of Jagadeeshwar Reddy.
Sridhar Babu, referring to the MoUs signed during the chief minister’s visit to the United States, said that a special cell would be created to follow up on the commitments made by the companies. The delegation, in its visit to the US and South Korea, had signed MoUs with 19 companies for investing ₹31,500 crore, with a potential to create 30,750 jobs.
The minister said that the state government was following up on the MoUs signed at Davos during the World Economic Forum’s meeting in January. “We are following up with the companies who expressed a desire to invest in Hyderabad. We want to encourage the companies to invest in tier II and tier III cities in the state,” the IT minister said.
He refuted the charge that Foxconn had moved to Bengaluru because of the government’s ineptitude. “Foxconn is a huge company with several verticals. For one vertical one place is convenient and for another, a different place.”
It all depends on what is required for the functioning of a vertical. We are ready to extend all cooperation to Foxconn and they are showing keen interest in setting up their unit in Hyderabad,” the minister said.
Sridhar Babu said that there was a conflict between signing MoUs with the Adani Group during the Davos meeting and the Congress organising protests on 22 August seeking a joint parliamentary party probe into the Hindenburg indictment of Adani companies.
He said the state government always was open to investment as it considered the benefit of employment to the youth. “Since the Congress party has given a call for protest, we will take part in it,” he said.
The minister said that the visit to the US was more exploratory than making calculations about the investments that had landed in Telangana. “We wanted to share our views with the investors, explain what they could expect from the state and how it would help them in growing their business,” he said, asserting that the exercise was to make investors evince interest in Telangana.
He said the delegation covered six cities in as many days in the US: New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia, Washington, DC, Dallas, and San Francisco. “We had over 50 individual business meetings in addition to three industry roundtables focused on GCCs, AI, and semiconductors,” he said.
The notable events were the meeting with World Bank President Ajay Banga and CEO of Adobe, Shantanu Narayen. “We discussed flagship projects of the government, particularly the Future City, AI City, Skills University, and Musi River Front Rejuvenation with them,” he said.
The delegation also visited the Apple Inc. headquarters and Google Cloud office in the Bay Area and had a first-hand experience of the work that these two tech giants were pursuing. The delegates also explained to company officials how Telangana could engage with them.
“We visited the Stanford campus and interacted with the professors at the Stanford Bio-design Centre,” he said.
(Edited by Majnu Babu).
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