Following is an excerpt from a report in Business Standard.

…  A high level delegation of the state government which was recently on a visit to Pune, the hub of the country’s automotive industry, has got some positive signals from the auto majors.

"Tata Motors, Fiat and John Deere have evinced interest in setting up their manufacturing bases in Orissa. These auto majors have assured us that the would definitely keep Orissa on their investment radar while pursuing their expansion plans and this is a positive development”, C J Venugopal, chairman and managing director of Industrial Promotion and Investment Corporation of Orissa Ltd (Ipicol) told Business Standard.

Apart from Venugopal, the state industries secretary Saurabh Garg; chairman and managing director of Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Orissa (Idco) Priyabrata Pattnaik and veteran business leaders of the state who were part of the delegation, made a detailed presentation to the prospective investors.

We have asked the prospective investors in the auto sector not to be carried away by the negative publicity surrounding the projects of Posco and Vedanta. Our objective was to sensitize these investors who had never considered Orissa as an ideal investment destination for auto manufacturing. Once, we convince the big auto manufacturers to set up their manufacture ring bases in the state, the auto ancillaries will automatically follow”, he added.

The high profile delegation highlighted the strengths of Orissa including the state’s stable political climate, enabling infrastructure, consistently healthy GDP growth for the past few years, availability of cheap and productive labour and low incidence of labour unrest.

It is our earnest endeavour to diversify the state’s investment base and getting the auto majors to invest is the first step in this direction, Venugopal said, adding, “we are making efforts to get investors in sectors like automobiles, chemicals and food processing as the state has already attracted large number of investors in sectors like steel, aluminium, power and .”