India would have hit 5 trillion if rest of India performed like Telangana: KTR

Hyderabad: Telangana IT and Industries minister KT Rama Rao on Tuesday said that India would have been a 5 trillion economy if the rest of India did as well as Telangana.

Addressing a group of industrialists at the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) Telangana State Annual Meeting 2022-23 & Conference on Beyond India@75, he said, “People here that have the ability to have an audience with the Prime Minister and the others, please tell them that we would have already been a 5 trillion economy, if the rest of India did as well as Telangana did”.

KTR stated that in spite of Telangana being a performing state, it is penalised. “Hyderabad pharma city, which will be the largest pharma cluster in the world, and Kakatiya mega textile park, the largest in India for textiles, will not receive support from the Government of India. We will not receive new manufacturing clusters for electronics”, said the minister.

He said “In 2014, the per capita income of the state was Rs 1.24 lakhs and now the per capita income of Telangana is Rs 3.17 lakhs. Gross State Domestic Product (GSDP) in 2014 was Rs 5.06 lakh crores and today it is Rs 13.27 lakh crores. On both these counts we have improved by 155 percent and 162 percent respectively. The rest of India, unfortunately, did not do as well as we did”.

Referring to the promises made during the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh in the Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Act (APRA) 2014, the minister said, “I speak for both Telangana and Andhra, we have been promised that industrial corridors will be promoted and special incentives will be given for industrialisation, these promises have not materialised even for 9 years”.

“What was promised in the legislature if that’s not honored, where is the sanctity in calling ourselves the world’s largest democracy?” he added.

Speaking about the life sciences ecosystem in Telangana he said, “During the 2021 BioAsia, the valuation of the life sciences ecosystem in Telangana was 50 billion dollars. We set the goal to double it by 2030. In 2022 the valuation increased by 30 billion dollars and became 80 billion dollars. We have set a challenge by revising the goal by increasing the goal to 250 billion dollars by 2030”.

Calling Hyderabad the vaccine capital of the world, KTR said that 35% of vaccines, i.e, 9 billion number of doses are being produced in Hyderabad.”We are hopeful that the number of doses would increase to 14 billion doses by next year,” said the minister.

Commenting on ‘Make in India’ he said, “It is a good slogan but has it translated into reality? In a meeting, Dr. Rajeev Nath, head of the Association of Indian Medical Device Industry (AIMED), told me that we had 1,200 companies in the past. 600 are now closed and we are left with 600. Why is it easy to manufacture in china and import the products from thousands of miles and still have them selling for cheaper prices than locally manufactured goods?”

The minister further said that India needs ‘economic engines’ like Hyderabad to attract talent from across the world. “India is a union of states, unless the better-performing states are incentivised, we are doing a great disservice to ourselves, said the Telangana minister.