Focus on Vizag as best venue for global events

Vijayawada: The state government will be showcasing Visakhapatnam as the best venue for global events and putting every effort to give it a facelift. This has given rise to fresh speculations that the YSRC government would soon take a decision to shift the executive capital to the port city.

The showcasing would begin with international health summit, IT summit on January 20 and 21 and Global Tech Summit on February 16 and 17. This would be followed by a mega event, Global Investors Summit on March 3 and 4.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Apple CEO Tim Cook, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft Executive Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella are on the invitees' list of the Andhra Pradesh government for the Global Summit.

Fifteen Union Ministers, 15 Chief Ministers, 44 global industrialists, 53 Indian industry bigwigs and ambassadors of various countries are being invited for the two-day event on which the Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy government is betting big to attract large-scale investments into the state.

Amazon Executive Chairman Jeff Bezos and Samsung Chairman and CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon are also on the invitees' list for the summit to be held in the port city. Similarly, Mukesh Ambani, Gautam Adani, Anand Mahindra, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Adi Godrej, Rishad Premji and N Chandrasekaran are some of the Indian industry giants being invited.

The Chief Minister noted that the GIS was being hosted "with the goal of preparing for the future." The summit will offer an all-inclusive platform to international and domestic investors, policy-makers, diplomats from various countries, country business delegations, influencers, industry associations and trade bodies to explore opportunities and enter into long-term partnerships, a top official of the Industries and Investment Department said.

The event would have Business-to-Business (B2B) and Government-to-Business (G2B) meetings and sector-specific plenary sessions to exhibit opportunities for global leaders with focus sectors being agri-food processing, aerospace, defence, automobile and electric vehicles, industrial and logistics infrastructure, petroleum and petrochemicals, electronics and Information Technology, pharmaceuticals, renewable energy, MSMEs and tourism, among others, the officials said.

The state government will conduct roadshows in Germany (January 20-26), Japan (Jan 25-27), South Korea (Jan 30-31) and USA (February 6-10) to propagate the Summit. Roadshows will also be held in the UAE and Taiwan, but the dates have not been fixed yet. In India, a roadshow of the Summit will be conducted in New Delhi from January 10-14 and in Mumbai on February 3. Dates for the event in Bengaluru, Chennai and Hyderabad have not been finalised.

It may be noted that G20 summits are also scheduled to be held in Visakhapatnam on March 28 and 29 and again on April 24.