New Delhi, Dec 8 (Reuters) – India’s Gujarat state aims to be a primary focus for foreign investors, particularly in infrastructure like ports, power and roads, the leader of the west coast province said on Monday. 

“The word industrialization is humming in Gujarat’s air. Above all the government is investor-friendly,” Chief Minister Dilip Parikh told a luncheon meeting at the World Economic Forum’s India Economic Summit. 

 Parikh said Gujarat, which was created 13 years after India won independence from Britain in 1947, was already the second most industrialised of the country’s 25 states and had unveiled an aggressive five-year industrialisation policy in 1995. 

“Gujarat accounts for one-fifth of total investment in India and for 16 percent of the country’s exports,” he said. 

“Petrochemicals, chemicals, textiles and engineering units are coming up, but most important is infrastructure like power, ports, roads, and urban development,” Parikh said. 

“We need foreign investment for these infrastructure projects; it is a stupendous task.” He said since India’s liberalisation programme began in 1991 Gujarat had drawn foreign direct investments worth about $1.3 billion for 281 projects. 

Ashok Chawla, Gujarat’s industries commissioner, told the same meeting that the western state estimated it needed $29 billion in infrastructure investment, $15 billions of it for ports. 

In October trading house Adani Exports said it and the Gujarat government had taken equal stakes in developing a port at Mundra, west of the major port of Kandla. 

“I have for you a number of investment opportunities in the areas of port development, LNG (liquefied natural gas) terminals, mega power plants located near the LNG terminals or on the coast based on imported coal,” Parikh said. 

Earlier this month the Royal Dutch/Shell group said it had acquired Indian government permission to build a $540 million, 2.7 million tonne LNG import and regassification terminal at Hazira, on Gujarat’s coast. 

Shell and India’s Essar group hope to complete the terminal by end-2001 to supply natural gas to Essar’s power and steel plants at Hazira. 

Also earlier this month Anglo-Norwegian engineering and construction group Kvaerner said it had won a 600 million crown contract to build a jetty for handling liquid chemicals at the port of Dahej that will handle up to1.8 million tones of liquid cargo per year. 

Chawla said Gujarat, which had 6,500 megawatts of electricity generation capacity at end-March 1997, aimed to grow this to 15,000 megawatts by the year 2000. 

“The state is currently marginally deficit in power but we will be in surplus in 18 months,” Chawla said. 

Parikh said Gujarat had also opened a software technology park near the city of Ahmedabad and was keen to build the corridor between Ahmedabad the Vadodara as a “Silicon Corridor”. 

“For those with strength in IT (information technology) industry, let me mention that the software industry is going to witness a boom in Gujarat in the near future,” he said. 

Parikh took power on November 13 after the Congress party withdrew support to his predecessor and noted that he was Gujarat’s fourth chief minister in 30 months. 

“Whichever party is in power, whosoever is chief minister, industrialisation will go ahead, march ahead,” he said. Entrepreneurship will not be affected by change of leadership.” 

(c) Reuters Limited 1997