First, it was Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan pledging to cut red tape for new investments. Now, in an exclusive interview with CNBC-TV18, the state’s Industries Minister, P. Rajeev, has said the state is focused on converting over 60 percent of the investment proposals made at the summit into tangible projects.
“We have seen over ₹1 lakh crore worth of investment proposals come to us in the form of EOIs, or Expressions of Interest,” said Rajeev. “We are trying to raise our own conversion rate of these proposals to above 60% from the present-day norm of 10 to 15%.”
In total, Kerala netted investment proposals worth ₹1.52 lakh crore, of which Adani Ports and SEZ alone contributed ₹30,000 crore in investment proposals to expand the Vizhinjam Port and the Thiruvananthapuram Airport. Other companies, including the Lulu Group and UAE-based Sharaf Group, have also made sizeable investment proposals.
However, if there is an even bigger task at hand for the industries minister, it is to shake off the tag of Kerala not exactly being an investor-friendly state. Rajeev, however, insisted that the perception of Kerala not being investor-friendly was “far from fact.”
“According to data from the Union Labour Ministry, 28% of strikes reported pan-India were from Tamil Nadu, and 17% were from Maharashtra,” he pointed out. “In contrast, India’s indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, was built by Cochin Shipyard with no man-hours lost, and no factory here has been attacked in the last 30 years under the LDF and UDF governments.” He added, “This image of Kerala as a militant trade union state and the land of strikes is manufactured news.”
However, with limited available land for industry and the conspicuous absence of an industrial backbone in contrast to its neighbour, Tamil Nadu, the question remains: which sectors will Kerala focus on? While the emphasis is clearly on sectors like ports and food processing, some experts feel the state must also focus on services and high-value manufacturing.
“We will not be focusing on big manufacturing because our landscape is limited,” Rajeev said, ruling out the prospect of following the Tamil Nadu approach. “What we will be doing is focusing on high-value production—we are in a solid position to provide tech to states that build cars.”
Another focus area is tech, as the industries minister reasons that technology firms hiring local talent will ensure that money flows back into the Kerala economy. He added, “We are also focusing on developing our GCCs, electronics, and medical devices sector.”
Specifics aside, what the Kerala government is almost entirely focused on is the sector-agnostic objective of investor summits in the first place—plain and simple job creation. “We want to build 3.4 lakh new small enterprises and generate 7.5 lakh jobs; we hope to create around 20 lakh jobs within the term of our government.”
