E-Paper
Brand Yogi at play, will investment upswing help BJP’s Mission 80 in Uttar Pradesh?
Yogi Adityanath himself has time and again stated that Uttar Pradesh shed the BIMARU tag and is turning out to be the best destination for investors.
As he completes seven years in office, chief minister Yogi Adityanath has a string of economic achievements to his credit, including the state attracting large-scale investment, shedding the BIMARU tag and nearly doubling the Gross State Domestic Product and it remains to be seen whether this upswing will enable the BJP to achieve its mission of winning all 80 Lok Sabha seats in the state.
Even as Brand Yogi remains at play, winning a high tally of seats in the state is crucial to the BJP’s aspirations of forming the government at the Centre for a third consecutive term. The Lok Sabha polls will see voting in all seven phases in Uttar Pradesh from April 19 to June 1. In 2014 and 2019, powered by the Modi wave, the BJP scored phenomenal wins in the Lok Sabha polls in the state.
Recently, amid the opposition’s consistent questions about the claims on attracting investment, the state government gave details of how much investment has been brought to the ground and how much more may be implemented in the coming period in Uttar Pradesh.
According to details provided in the state legislative assembly, the state government has implemented nearly 50% of ₹4.28 lakh crore investment proposals received at the Uttar Pradesh Investors Summit-2018.
Out of the 1777 projects involving investment of ₹2.09 lakh crore, 843 projects have started commercial operations while 910 projects worth ₹69,832.51 crore are in different phases of implementation and are yet to achieve commercial operations. Four projects involving investment of ₹3688.43 crore are yet to start while 20 projects worth ₹7071.87 crore have been dropped.
The Yogi 1.0 government began preparations to hold an investors’ summit soon after installation of Yogi Adityanath as Uttar Pradesh chief minister in March 2017.
Less than a year later, the Uttar Pradesh Investors Summit-2018 was organised here on February 21 and 22, 2018. Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) worth ₹4.28 lakh crore were signed at the event.
Five years after the first event, the Yogi 2.0 government organised the Uttar Pradesh Global Investors Summit-2023 in February 2023 with claims of signing of the MoUs worth ₹33.50 lakh crore. Yogi now says the UPGIS-2023 has received investment proposals of ₹40 lakh crore.
In a first, the Uttar Pradesh government has organised four groundbreaking ceremonies to bring investment to the ground.
Three groundbreaking ceremonies (GBC) were organised here on July 29, 2018, July 28, 2019, and June 3, 2022 to implement investment projects worth ₹2.09 lakh crore. Additionally, the Yogi 2.0 government organised the GBC 4.0 here on February 19, 2024, to implement investment proposals of ₹10.11 lakh crore.
Efforts to bring investment have been made from time to time. These include setting up of Udyog Bandhu during the Congress regime and the Uttar Pradesh development council under the Samajwadi Party rule in 2003. But it is now that the quantum of investment proposals received at the investor summits organised in 2018 and 2023 have helped in changing the perception of the state to a large extent.
Yogi Adityanath himself has time and again stated that Uttar Pradesh shed the BIMARU tag and is turning out to be the best destination for investors.
BIMARU, the acronym used for Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, was often used to describe backwardness of these states in the past.
The Uttar Pradesh Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP), which was ₹12.47 lakh crore in 2016-2017, has gone up to ₹24.39 crore in 2023-2024 though the pace of GSDP growth is yet to achieve the desired level.
The state government has also been able to raise the credit deposit (CD) ratio from 46% in March 2017 to 58.59% in 2024. The chief minister has now given directives to the nationalised banks to take the CD ratio to 65%.
A considerable change has also been seen in terms of the state budget’s size. Yogi 1.0 government had presented its first annual budget of ₹3.84 crore in 2017-2018.
For 2024-2025, the Yogi 2.0 government presented an annual budget of ₹7.36 lakh crore.
“There is much to applaud for what the Yogi government did on the economic front during the last seven years. The foremost thing has been the tremendous improvement in the climate for investment and providing a big push to investment, especially in infrastructure. This has increased the productive capacity of the economy that is gradually getting reflected in the higher growth of GSDP in recent years. The state’s innovative “One District One Product” (ODOP) programme has found acceptance at an all-India level. The state government has also attempted to reduce inter-regional disparities... Despite the increased size of the budget over the years, the government has maintained fiscal discipline; keeping the gross fiscal deficit within mandated limits. Uttar Pradesh is now well poised for a big leap forward in its journey towards a trillion-dollar economy,” said Professor Yashvir Tyagi, former head of the department of economics, Lucknow University.
