We Have Everything Going for Rajasthan

Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Rajasthan’s industry and commerce minister, tells Pushpita Dey why the state is suited to become a hub for investments.

- Pushpita Dey

What kind of incentives are you planning to offer to attract foreign investors?

Our intention and commitment to positively change the economic environment in Rajasthan is demonstrated by the fact that despite the challenges of [forming the new state] government and with very little time, we had a global event [the second edition of the Rising Rajasthan Summit] and reached out to more than a dozen nations.

About 35 countries are participating in it, a large number of them are partner countries and we have signed a number of MoUs [memorandums of understanding].

The interest is tremendous. We have two governments [central and state] working in sync, and this is a reason for the huge investments and confidence. We had done our homework before Rising Rajasthan and we were clear that when we do this outreach, we have to live up to what we promise.

Rajasthan has had single window clearance, but we have turned that into an efficient machinery, bringing in transparency using IT [information technology] structures so the clearances are faster.

We have identified the usual bottlenecks and come up with 21 new policies. For example, ‘one-districtone-product’ policy, private industrial parks policy, textile and apparel policy, land aggregation policy; we have come up with a policy for every sector and an MSME [micro, small and medium enterprises] policy as well.