Ambani, Adani, Anil Agarwal commit to invest ₹1.5 lakh cr in Assam

Reliance Industries, Vedanta and the Adani group have collectively committed to invest over ₹1.5 lakh crore in Assam across different sectors, the respective heads of the organisations said at the Advantage Assam Summit.RIL’s Chairman and Managing Director Mukesh Ambani said he would more than quadruple the investment in Assam over the last six years to over ₹50,000 in the next five years. Addressing the gathering at the summit, Ambani pointed out that in the previous summit in 2018, RIL had committed to investing ₹5,000 crore in the State but had actually invested over ₹12,000 crore since then.

The priority areas for investment would be in data centres, green energy, food parks, retail infrastructure and hospitality. “These five mega initiatives will also create tens of thousands of direct and in-direct employment opportunities for the youth in Assam,” he said.

Ambani said his company’s first priority was to make Assam tech and AI-ready, and for this RIL would be setting up an AI-ready data centre in Assam, that would help teachers, doctors, farmers and help the youth to learn from home.

The second priority was to make Assam a hub of clean and green energy and Ambani promised to build two world-class hubs of compressed biogas (CBG) over wastelands in Assam. This would produce 8 lakh tonnes of clean biogas annually, enough to fuel 2 lakh passenger cars every day, he said.

RIL will also set up a mega food park “which will add value to the abundant agricultural and horticultural produce of Assam.” Last Saturday, Reliance Consumer Products inaugurated a Campa and beverages bottling plant in Guwahati.

The fourth priority was to double the number of Reliance Retail stores in the state to 800 in the next five years.

In order to boost tourism and the hospitality sector in the state, RIL intends to build “a luxurious, seven-star Oberoi hotel in the heart of Assam.”

Vedanta group’s Cairn Oil & Gas committed to invest in exploration and production of oil and gas worth ₹50,000 crore in the region. “With an investment exceeding ₹50,000 crore, we will produce 100,000 barrels of oil and gas per day from Assam – making it a dominant hydrocarbon hub, while creating direct & indirect employment opportunities for 1 lakh youth,” Anil Agarwal, Chairman of Vedanta said.

Gautam Adani also committed to invest ₹50,000 crore in Assam, saying, “our investments will span across airports, aerocities, city gas distribution, transmission, cement, and road projects.”