BOMBAY, 19 June 2005 — Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh yesterday flew to the United States on a fortnight’s marketing-cum-pleasure tour to generate investments. He was accompanied by several ministers and a team of bureaucrats. Prior to departure, Deshmukh stated that his mission to US was to explore investment opportunities in biotechnology and education.
Deshmukh had said that he would visit the Hollywood to assess the possibilities of investment in the Bombay film industry and said that his trip to the US was to market Maharashtra as an investment destination. Currently the state has a debt of Indian rupees 12 billion which is rising steadily.
An official press release said that the chief minister would study opportunities for development of the film industry in Bombay and assess whether Hollywood and Bollywood could cooperate with each other in the field of film production.
He plans to visit Universal Studios in Hollywood on weekend. A senior minister questioned this, asking to whom Deshmukh intended to talk to on the days when no one was at work. The minister publicly doubted that US investors would “be falling over themselves” to buy into an improbable “Maharashtra Shining” story at a time of crippling power cuts and failing infrastructure.
Deshmukh and his delegation will visit aircraft manufacturer Boeing and attempt to convince them to set up facilities in Bombay as Boeing was sells planes to several Indian aviation companies. The delegation will also meet officials from Delta Airlines in Atlanta.
Before departure, the chief minister said he would attend “BIO 2005,” an international seminar on biotechnology to be held in Philadelphia, during which he would give a speech and seek investments in biotechnology. Deshmukh will also meet departmental heads of International Development Center at Stanford University to ascertain whether foreign universities could help the Maharashtra government open centers in the state.
Prominent Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and leader of the opposition in the state legislature council Nitin Gadkari attacked Deshmukh and said that he should have first set his house in order prior to seeking investment from abroad, instead of making a futile trip to the US.
He added that since the time the Congress led Democratic Front government had come into power in the state, it has made no new proposals to attract foreign investments in the state. Moreover, during Deshmukh’s earlier trip to US, as not a single investor showed any interest in investments in Maharashtra.
