In September 2015, newspapers in Tamil Nadu screamed out bombastic numbers on the amount of investment which had supposedly been brought into the state, thanks to the hugely celebrated Global Investors Meet spearheaded by TN CM J Jayalalithaa.
The amount of investment promised by industrialists in the form of MoU’s skyrocketed to figures like Rs. 2 lakh crore, and the budget for the meet itself was pegged at Rs. 100 crore.
At that time, The News Minute had pointed out as to how the investment numbers can be misleading. Read here.
We had then reported from the data available with the Directorate of Industrial Policy and Promotion that in 2015, up to July, Rs. 17,412 crore worth of IEMs were signed, of which only Rs. 41 crore were actually implemented. That’s an implementation rate of 0.2%.
According to fresh DIPP data it is now seen that in all of 2015, an amount of Rs. 19,574 crore was promised as investments in the state of Tamil Nadu, and off that only a paltry Rs. 501 crore has materialized. That brings the investment implementation rate to about 2.5% - that’s only 2.5% of the money promised has actually come in. Seven months since the GIM, there has been little improvement in the actual investment atmosphere in the state.
Surprisingly, in 2014, a year in which for several months Jayalalithaa was not the Chief Minister owing to her being in jail, the implementation rate was 17%, as explained here.
The picture is not very pretty for the whole of AIADMK regime either. Since 2011, according to DIPP data and our calculations, the total investment promised was Rs. 156101 crore, and what came through was Rs. 6052 crore only. The rate of implementation of the investment is at 3.8%.
Times of India points out as to how this is not the case with other states. Calculating the figures between 2013-15, TOI points out how actual investment made in AP in the period was Rs 12,367 crore, in Karnataka it was 21,000 crore but in Tamil Nadu it was just Rs. 5293 crore. MP and Rajasthan have reportedly raced ahead of TN in getting new investments and in converting them into projects.