Following Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s ambitious target of India becoming a $5 trillion economy, UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath is aiming for a $1 trillion economy for the state. “Under the leadership of the chief minister, there is clear intent and content to grow faster,” Kumar said. “UP was contributing 8% to the national economy a decade back. This has gone up to 9%. We have 17% of the population of the country. We want to contribute to the national economy commensurate with our population,” Kumar said at the ET Now Global Business Summit.
The state’s growth is 17%, higher than the 16% national growth rate.
Kumar explained three important structural changes which the state has introduced in order to become the leading economy of the country.
“Instilling the rule of law is the first structural change which has been a priority under the CM’s leadership,” he said. “Law and order has been the first beneficiary of this. When I say law and order, it is not in a restricted sense but in an institutionalised sense. The police and other institutions have access to better resources, training and execution is better. The state has zero tolerance towards crime.”
On infrastructure development, Kumar said UP has 55% of the country’s expressways as well as 16 airports, making it a state that’s easy to access.
“Out of the 16 airports, four are international and the fifth one is coming up at Jewar, which is going to be Asia’s largest airport. We have around 33% of freight corridors and metro services in six cities. So we are number one when it comes to connectivity,” he said.At a time when every other state is trying to woo investors with tax holidays and incentives, Kumar said UP offers a lot of differentiation.
“First of all, we have the largest consumer base in the country,” he said. “Every sixth Indian is in UP. We have a huge land pool of 75,000 acres of developed industrial land. We have 34 sector-specific policies. All along the expressways, we have opened industrial nodes and it is helping the state in attracting investment. You name the sectors such as semiconductors, defence, renewable energy, leather and non-leather goods and UP has it all.”
Investors are welcomed by the state. “Our CM is very particular. He says speed is the new incentive. From the time an investor expresses his interest to invest in UP, there is handholding and CM also monitors it closely through the CM portal. The investor also realises they have direct access to the CM.”
He further added that due to the efforts by the state, 55% mobile phones and 60-65% electronic components are manufactured in UP.
He said the state de-regularised 557 provisions and that has helped the state go up in ease of doing business ranking.
“UP has also moved up in the ease of doing business ranking from 9th position to one among the frontrunners,” he said.
Apart from industrialisation, Kumar reinforced that 65% of the state population is still dependent on agriculture and it must be given priority by the government. Agriculture contributes about 26% of the state’s economy. He said that UP is the leading producer of wheat, potato and sugarcane but diversification is the need of the hour.