Lucknow, Feb 21 (KNN) Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the much awaited two-day Uttar Pradesh Investors' Summit 2018 in the city today. Inaugurating the summit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in UP, MSMEs play a major role.

“After agriculture, MSME sector offers the highest possibility of employment," he said

Speaking about Uttar Pradesh's one district, one product policy, PM Modi said that the move combined with various pro-MSMEs policies would help the sector flourish.

“Can there be a competition between Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra to achieve the target of trillion dollar economy, first?,” he asked.

PM Modi said that the upcoming infrastructures project in the state will take Uttar Pradesh to new heights in the 21st century.

Modi said "Keeping in mind the development of Bundelkhand, the government has decided to extend the Uttar Pradesh's defence corridor to Agra, Allahabad, Lucknow, Kanpur, Jhansi and Chitrakut."

Talking about various prominent sectors that has excelled in Uttar Pradesh so far, PM Modi said that UP has the potential be the engine of growth in our country.

Modi also launched Nivesh Mitra, an online platform entrepreneur friendly application to enhance ease of doing business in UP. The digital portal has salient features such as one payment gateway that will fasten digital clearances.

Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath said the focus sector of the summit includes handlooms, dairy, MSE, IT, start-ups, electronics, tourism, civil aviation, and films.

Yogi said that the government is implementing various policies in the state to make it more investment-friendly. He added that neraly 40 lakh jobs will be created in the state in the coming years.

Several Union Ministers including Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Nirmala Sitharaman, Nitin Gadkari, Suresh Prabhu, Smriti Irani, Ravi Shankar Prasad, Dr Harsh Vardhan, V K Singh, Dharmendra Pradhan will attend the summit and chair individual sessions to attract investment for the state.

President Ram Nath Kovind will be present at the closing ceremony tomorrow.

The day one of the summit itself has witnesses promises of investments of several thousands crores by big companies.

Mukesh Ambani has said Jio is largest investor in Uttar Pradesh with over Rs.20,000 crore investment. Ambani also said that Jio will be present in every UP village by the end of this year.

Seven nations– Finland, Netherlands, Japan, Czech Republic, Thailand, Slovakia, and Mauritius have been identified as country partners for the event. Several memorandums of understandings (MoUs) are expected to be signed during the summit. (KNN Bureau)