K’taka sees its best investment implementation in 2018

Karnataka has seen a 10-fold jump in the implementation of investment at Rs 24,480 crore in 2018 compared to Rs 2,455 crore in the previous year.

According to data available on the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) website, the implementation of investment happens to be the all-time high in a single year in the state. The state government attributes the rise in implementation to closed monitoring of investment proposals along with a revamped reporting process.

With this, the state’s cumulative implementation of investment proposals has gone up to Rs 71,892 crore since the introduction of liberalisation in 1991.

According to the state industries department officials, the state government started monitoring the implementation closely, following a news report published in DH last year.

The department also revamped the reporting process.

“After the DH story highlighting the lack of implementation last year, we realised we had an issue on hand. We researched and realised that many of the investment proposals implemented had gone unreported. So we revamped the reporting. Also, we started closely monitoring the implementation,” a senior official from the Industries Department told DH.

With this, the state has moved back to the third position in terms of investment implementation, after a lacklustre 2017, when it stood at ninth slot. In 2016, the state was at third slot, however, the amount of investments implemented was far lower at Rs 9,162 crore.

Drop in new proposals

Despite maintaining its top slot in garnering investments, the state witnessed only Rs 90,583 crore in the form of new proposals in 2018, a drop of 40.5% from Rs 1,52,118 crore garnered in the year 2017. This is the first time in the past three years that the state has garnered investment proposals below Rs 1 lakh crore.

“You know last time we had to face the assembly elections. For three to four months, we had to face the problem of the code of conduct. During that time, the government couldn’t function properly,” KJ George, Minister of large and medium-scale industries told DH.

According to George, the state might face glitches in garnering investments this year as well because of the ensuing general elections.