TDP-YSRCP lock horns for credit over bringing Kia to Andhra Pradesh amid reports of carmaker's 'shifting'

In Lok Sabha, TDP and YSRCP MPs countered each other on Kia’s shifting reports

A “false” report that Kia Motors is moving out of Andhra Pradesh, has reignited a debate as who had truly brought the Korean major to the state.

When Kia Motors, five years back, was scouting for a suitable location for its $ 1.1 billion plant with three-lakh unit annual production capacity in India, Andhra Pradesh was not its favorite.

It almost went to Tamil Nadu but allegations of bribe demands have reportedly set Kia’s sail towards neighboring Andhra Pradesh, where its CM Chandrababu Naidu went on an overdrive to attract the company. For a name like Kia, his government believed, would attract further global investments to a truncated state suffering the loss of Hyderabad.

Kia had announced its Anantapuram location in April 2017. The fully functional unit was inaugurated by present CM Jaganmohan Reddy in December 2019.

On Thursday morning a Reuters report jolted Reddy’s machinery and allowed pro-TDP news channels, social media activists castigate him for “letting a revenue-employment generating huge investment slip away.”

YSRCP’s Parliamentary party leader Vijayasai Reddy fumed at this “disinformation campaign” and said, “Kia going to TN came to AP because of PM Modi’s intervention.”

YSRCP tried to deny the Kia credit to Naidu earlier too. In July 2019, finance minister Buggana Rajendranath referred to a letter written by President-CEO of Kia Motors Han-Woo Park to Jagan, where Park mentions his 2007 meeting with senior YSR.

Park was leading the Hyundai Motor R&D Centre, Hyundai Motor India Engineering, in Hyderabad. “At that time, I had the pleasure of meeting Dr Reddy, your late father and then CM, who requested me to invest in an automobile factory in the state."

"I promised him we would do so if the Hyundai Motor Group were to have any additional investment plans in India. I firmly believe that our long-standing relationship played an important role in the decision by Kia Motors, a member of the Hyundai Motor Group, to locate its first India plant in AP,” Park said in the letter.

Buggana claimed the seed for Kia’s investment in AP as sown then.

On Thursday, Naidu held a presser reminding his “strenuous efforts creating an automobile ecosystem in AP.”

“Kia was looking at TN, Maharashtra, Gujarat but we invited them to see what we had to offer. They first visited Sri-City in Chittoor and then Anantapuram. When they pointed to water unavailability, we completed the Gollapalli reservoir providing a dedicated line to Kia. We got the land levelled in record two months which gave them immense confidence. And I visited their establishment in South Korea. I made Kia possible here,” Naidu said in Vijayawada. “Bringing investment is hard, driving them away is easy,” Naidu added.