November 15: Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh today showcased Mumbai as the gateway for foreign investments in India and assured that Maharashtra would soon regain its numero uno position in the country. He was addressing the US investment summit `The Progressive West' held at the Taj today.Deshmukh identified the Bandra-Kurla complex as the next destination for insurance multinationals planning to enter India and said the new government would promote Navi Mumbai as the next Silicon Valley. ``We will provide plots to insurance companies to set up headquarters at the Bandra-Kurla complex, while software firms can go to the software parks in Navi Mumbai,'' he said.Sending out a warning to ``extortionists'' who have troubled the business community in the recent past, Deshmukh said Mumbai had lost its charm for investment in the last few years due to law and order problems. ``The Democratic Front government will deal severely with extortionists and create a favourable environment for thebusiness community,'' he promised.``I would like investments to flow back to Mumbai as we have the best infrastructure in the country, including the biggest port, airports, roads, surplus power and water,'' he said. ``Like the Gateway of India, the state will not have any doors for foreign investors,'' he added.To attract more investments, Deshmukh said, the government will ``look into'' the possibility of finding an alternative to octroi. Due to rampant corruption at octroi nakas, the trading community has fled to other states, and Maharashtra remains the only state to have the octroi system which has bred corruption and slowed down the movement of goods.``The state is open to rationalisation of the tax regime through a dialogue with industry,'' Deshmukh said. ``Maharashtra is poised for a radical transformation to a matured economy,'' the CM told the summit which was attended by US ambassador to India Richard Celeste and senior US Congressman Gary Ackerman (who is also on the Congressional caucuson India), among others.The new Congress-Nationalist Congress Party government in the state is committed to promoting private and foreign investment, Deshmukh noted, adding that Maharashtra has always been in the forefront of social and economic reforms. Now that the world is about to enter the new millennium, these reforms would be carried out at a faster pace, assured the CM. He said that various projects of the state, including the employment guarantee scheme, are considered role models by other countries, and even the World Bank has appreciated them.Deshmukh maintained that Maharashtra was still a favoured investment destination, and even a recent United States Embassy report had endorsed this. ``Around 57 per cent of the foreign investment out of the total US $4.6 billion in the five-year span ending 2003 will be in Maharashtra. For such investments, the government is committed to provide a conducive environment and state-of-the-art infrastructure. Most of the foreign direct investment approvalsare in the state,'' he said.The CM pointed out that rapid progress is being made in the area of Information Technology (IT) in the state, and computer literacy is a must for certain government jobs.
