Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani will deliver a special address at the first-ever, high-level investment conference on Maharashtra to be held in New York this month.
A delegation of senior government officials, led by Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, will attend the conference.
"The whole purpose from the point of view of the government is to attract investment for the state which projects growth rates in the industrial and services sector to be 10 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively, by 2010," Jagdish Vasudev, president of Brihan Maharashtra Mandal of North America, said.
Vasudev said although BMM does not have any direct involvement inputting together the forum in New York, which is actually being done by Institutional Investor, the organisation has been instrumental in having such a conference held in the United States.
"During one of the my recent meetings with the chief minister in Mumbai I invited him to come over the US to attend a daylong business conference in Seattle in June this month during BMM's 13th biennial convention and to scout for investment. The idea of a high-level independent investment forum in New York grew out of that proposal," Vasudev, who was senior vice-president of Bank of America for International Risk, told rediff.com.
The chief minister, who will keynote the conference, will be accompanied by Maharashtra Minister for Industries Ashok Chavan; Principal secretary for industries, government of Maharashtra V K Jairath and others.
In addition to top government officials, the June 24-25 Investment Forum will feature -- apart from Mukesh Ambani -- Baba Kalyani, chairman and managing director of Bharat Forge; Arun Nanda, executive director of Mahindra and Mahindra; Rajnikant Patel, CEO of Bombay Stock Exchange; Madhur Bajaj, vice-chairman, Baja Auto; Dr Wilfried Aulbur, CEO DaimlerChrysler India; Dr Ajit Ranade, group chief economist, Aditya Birla Group and Dr Philip Swan, chief economist, IBM Corporation, among others.
The two-day forum will also have a number of panel discussion on issues like investment opportunities in the state, challenges of infrastructure development and positioning Mumbai as a regional financial hub, an idea that has been mooted by the Union government.
Maharashtra accounts for nearly one-fifth of the gross value of India's entire industrial sector and the Mumbai-Pune zone which is the major industrial district accounts for more than 60percent of the state's industrial output.
Following the New York Investment Forum, Deshmukh and his delegation will go to Seattle June 28 to attend a daylong business conference 28 being organised by BMM on the eve of its three-day biennial convention beginning June 29.
