Advantage Assam 2.0: Pioneering New Horizons in catalysing Northeast’s Global Business Expansion

By – Kangkana Goswami Bharadwaz
Days after Chief Minister Dr. Himanta Biswa Sarma’s official engagement with over160 business leaders in Tokyo in January this year, a Japanese delegation led by Ambassador of Japan, Keiichi ONO visited the upcoming TATA semiconductor assembly and test site in Jagiroad as well as a bamboo harvesting site at the Assam Bio Ethanol Private Limited (ABEPL), expressing their renewed enthusiasm to work and expand in this part of the country. While the Chief Minister construed the visit as a crucial development to build up on ahead of the ambitious business summit on the 24th of this month, such personal indulgence on the part of these international delegates go a long way to explain and evince the sincerity, dexterity and efficiency bargained behind the highly ambitious Advantage Assam2.0. The renewed business temperament is also fueled by one of the most significant big-ticket recent investment in the form of the USD 3.3 billion ‘Outsourced Semiconductor Assembly and Test (OSAT)’ project by TATA in Jagiroad, which bears the potential to exemplify Assam’s ability to appeal large-scale investments in cutting-edge industries, solidifying its status as a competitive destination for high-value industries. Such accelerated momentum therefore, is exactly why, the mood and disposition in Assam is all set for the biggest business summit, to be kick-started by a high voltage inaugural session by the Prime Minister himself, thematic sessions featuring the likes of S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitaraman, Jyotiraditya Scindia, Dr. S Jaishankar, Ashwini Vaishnav, Hardeep Singh Puri, and Piyush Goyal , star studded presence of industry bigwigs like Tata Sons Chairman N Chandrasekaran, Vedanta Chairman Anil Agarwal, JSW Chairman Sajjan Jindal, Mukesh Ambani, and Gautam Adani and confirmed participation from four key bilateral agencies—US-India Business Council, India–New Zealand Business Council (INZBC), UAE-India Business Council (UIBC) and Taipei Economic and Cultural Centre in India.
With its strategic position at the crossroads of South and Southeast Asia, Advantage Assam 2.0 stands as a landmark initiative, poised to elevate Assam and the broader Northeast region into a global investment hub, that offers unparalleled economic potential, underpinned by its rich natural resources, burgeoning infrastructure, and progressive policy landscape. The mega-event has been envisioned with an anticipated unprecedented global engagement along with real-time international collaborations including participation from 31 confirmed countries, with seven partner nations like Japan, Bhutan, Singapore, Australia, Thailand, Malaysia, and the UAE. Bilateral and multilateral partnerships in the summit are also expected to witness a boost expecting engagements with four bilateral agencies and three multilateral institutions, fostering large-scale economic collaborations.
The event has carefully curated into its precinct certain key sectors as ‘Focus Sectors’ in an attempt to orchestrate an all-round, expansive as well as innovative environment into the State’s business ecosystem. Emphasizing on sectors such as ‘Renewable Energy & Hydrocarbons’ for enhancing Assam’s role as a sustainable energy hub, ‘Aerospace & Defence Manufacturing’ for leveraging the state’s strategical and geographical advantage in terms of national security, ‘Electronics & Semiconductors’, to position Assam as an emerging hub for high-tech industries, ‘Tourism & Cultural Heritage’ for showcasing Assam’s potential as a global tourist destination, and ‘Bamboo & Sustainable Industries’ for promoting eco-friendly industrialization etc., has been a few among the major targeted strategic domains.
In a first of its kind gesture to catalyze and bolster the presence and participation of international business magnates, a high-level delegation from Assam led by a coterie of key Ministers including the Chief Minister himself has toured a number of key nations as part of its global outreach initiative. Embarking on a whirlwind tour to prime Asian nations like South Korea , Japan, Bhutan and Singapore, Dr. Sarma seemed to be on a mission-mode with a rigorous campaign streak engaging a contingent of international business biggies, investors, industry honchos and senior government officials.
Minister of Industry, Bimal Borah made parallelly strenuous efforts, organizing strategic roadshows in Dubai, negotiating with prominent investors and even engaging with the British Minister for Indo-Pacific to catapult economic and trade relations between Assam and the UK, as an ambitious derivative Indian Government’s vision of a Viksit Assam fueled by international collaboration and global partnerships. Bora’s key initiatives to highlight Assam’s renewed industrial ambitions also included flaunting the Jogighopa Multimodal Logistics Park as game-changer for installing Assam as a pivotal logistics hub in India. Commenting on the idea behind the investors summit ,Bora opined that Assam is positioned at the cusp of unprecedented growth , presenting distinctive opportunities across a spectrum of industries, from traditional sectors to pioneering advancements in technology. It was Minister Borah’s high spirited pitch for transnational business collaborations in Assam, that led to the Indian Consul General to Dubai, Satish Kumar Sivan’s cognizance of the importance of such outreach in the backdrop of an exponential India-UAE trade equation that is set to reach record highs, exceeded $18 billion, this financial year.
Concerted efforts to bolster Assam’s growing business ecosystem also featured PHE Minister Jayanta Mallah Baruah’s high-profile investors’ roadshow in Ahmedabad, Science and Technology Minister Keshab Mahanta’s diplomatic mission in Malaysia and Thailand, and Minister of Health & Family Welfare, Ashok Kumar Singhal’s engagement with investors in Bengaluru as well as Kolkata addressing a gathering of over 200 investors, business leaders and policymakers.
In return, a rewarding phase of engagements with creation of new business relationships and cordial understandings have been visioned for, as achievements of Assam’s new-found South-East-Asian business engagements. Such accomplishments could be sensed from a recent development where Japan expressed its interest to recruit more than 50,000 workers and Singapore pegged for recruitment of nurses from the State. With such grit and poise, Assam can been seen endorsing and propelling a new business order in the years to come in sync with the broader ambition of Act East Policy and its fresh new determined demeanour to position itself as the gateway to South-East and ASEAN involvement.
(The author is Faculty of Law, National Law University and Judicial Academy, Assam)