Northeast hopes to draw much business from Mumbai summit

AGARTALA - With the sixth ‘North East Business Summit’ set to begin in Mumbai next week, the industry starved and resource crammed northeastern region is making all-out efforts to attract investment.

The union ministry of development of north eastern region (DoNER) in association with the Indian Chamber of Commerce is organising the two-day summit Jan 21-22.

“With the focus on attracting investments from neighbouring South East Asian countries and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) nations, the Mumbai summit would see high number of foreign diplomats and investors,” a DoNER official told IANS.

“DoNER Minister B.K. Handique himself threw his weight behind the effort (to organise the summit) to unlock the region, using its geographical advantage,” he said.

The eight northeastern states are surrounded by Bangladesh, Myanmar, Bhutan and China.

Conceding that the northeast has a long way to go before catching up with the national growth rate of nine percent, the official said that the central government was aiming to build the region as a major destination for Foreign Direct Investment and an export hub of the country.

Apart from foreign dignatories and investors, domestic investors too would get an opportunity to meet face to face with key planners, entrepreneurs and union and state ministers.

Several union ministers, chief ministers, industry and commerce ministers are expected to participate in the summit.

“Infrastructure development, mining of huge variety of natural resources, scope of power, agro and food processing, tourism, hospitality, bamboo and forest resource based industries among other issues would be the key theme of the summit,” the official added.

An exhibition portraying the huge resource and scope of investment available in the northeast region would also be organised along with the summit.