By Desaraju Surya
AMARAVATI: In six meetings between November 2024 and May 2025, the Andhra Pradesh State Investment Promotion Board headed by the Chief Minister announced to have approved 76 fresh investment proposals to the tune of Rs 4,95,796 crore that will lead to creation of 4,57,934 jobs.
A study of the proposals, however, reveals that there is nothing fresh about “committed investments” of Rs 91,045 crore. That also takes away 81,763 prospective jobs from the fresh count.
Add Rs 5,278 crore investment of the perceived dubious URSA Clusters venture, the total fraudulent claim comes to Rs 96,323 crore. And, 2,500 more jobs less!
Attracting investments of a staggering Rs 4.04 lakh crore in 11 months, including a sum of Rs 2,23,642 crore from giants like Arcelor Mittal Steel, Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited and Reliance Industries, is no small achievement. Yet, the Chandrababu Naidu government appears to make falsified claims through jacked-up numbers, defying logic.
Consider a few examples:
The public sector defence establishment Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL) came up with a proposal to set up its unit, at a cost of Rs 1400 crore to create 800 jobs, in (then) Anantapuramu district a decade ago in 2015. BEL was handed over 914 acres of land in 2016 but the project did not take off since then. It was expected to invest another Rs 1,100 crore in the phase-2.
About 449 acres of the 914-acre site is not fit for any construction.
Now, BEL made an application for extension of time for project implementation and also grant of certain incentives under the latest Industrial Development Policy.
This is now being claimed as a fresh investment!
Indosol was granted all incentives, land and other benefits during the previous YS Jagan Mohan Reddy government, for an investment of Rs 43,143 crore and 11,500 jobs.
As opposition parties, the TDP and the Jana Sena had vehemently opposed the project alleging that it’s “Jagan’s benami”.
Now in power, the parties in power are showcasing it as their ‘ultra-mega’ achievement for an investment of Rs 58,469 crore.
In fact, the project cost shot up because it was not implemented in time in the first place and then the location was changed from one place to another in SPS Nellore district.
Yet, the TDP-JSP-BJP regime is unabashedly brandishing Indosol as its own project!
ATC Tires is a company that set shop in Andhra Pradesh during the previous YSR Congress government. Apart from commencing production in its first phase, ATC also completed construction of its phase-2 manufacturing plant but could not commence production “due to lack of demand in international and domestic (tyre) markets”.
ATC had also lined up its third phase and 50 per cent of its plant and machinery have also been installed.
But now, the Chandrababu government is showing it as a fresh investment of Rs 1,779 crore!
These are just a few examples of the dubious claims and there are many others.
Interestingly, some of the companies that signed Memorandum of Understanding with the then Chandrababu government in 2018, promising thousands of crores of rupees of investments and thousands of jobs, are now lining up again to launch their ventures.
These are also being trumpeted as fresh investments though the Chandrababu regime had already once claimed credit for that.
Case in point is the Ecoren power projects that had in 2018 signed deals for Rs 11,000 crore investment and 3,000 jobs.
Ecoren had, in fact, bagged solar and wind power projects during the Jagan regime but is now handing them over to other companies.
Yet, all these are being showcased as fresh investments, which is outright fake.