Prime Minister Narendra Modi at Vibrant Gujarat 2015

Patna, Jan. 14: In election-bound Bihar, talks of investment took a backseat in Gujarat.

At the three-day Vibrant Gujarat Summit (that ended on Tuesday) in which Bihar had participated for the first time, many business houses expressed their desire to invest but chose to play the waiting game till the state’s Assembly elections.

Sources said that at the summit, which saw corporate giants of India and abroad promising to invest a staggering Rs 25 lakh crore in Gujarat, the delegation from Bihar had gone “unprepared” and were not able to participate in the seminars and interactive sessions as they had not registered themselves for the events.

However, the Bihar stall, which had been set up in the exhibition ground saw potential investors, who showed interest in putting money but not immediately because Bihar was going to the elections. The election is slated for October and November this year.

“Bihar participated for the first time in Vibrant Gujarat. The problem lied that we had not registered for the seminars and didn’t have the entry passes to attend the interactions. There was confusion and we had no idea that the last day of registration was December 31. There were representatives of many countries participating in the event and the disadvantage was that we couldn’t interact much with them. However, the Bihar stall, which was around 2km from the main venue, saw a lot of visitors and people appreciated our effort,” a delegation member said.

The official added there were potential investors, too, who had visited the Bihar stall and they were explained about the investment opportunities in the state.

“They were informed about the opportunities here and also about the industrial incentive policy, which was recently reviewed. However, the investors knew that the state would go to the elections this year. Many of them said they would want to wait and see the results of the elections before thinking about investments. There were hiccups because we participated for the first time but we have received positive reviews as well,” the official added.

Ravi Mittal, the principal secretary of the industries department, refused to comment anything about the outcome of the participation. However, Nisheeth Jaiswal, the vice-president of Bihar Industries Association, who was also a part of the delegation, said it was a good experience.

“The Pravasi Bharatiya Divas and Vibrant Gujarat were wonderful experiences for Bihar. The latter would have been better if we had had a chance to participate in the seminars and other sessions. By doing that, we would have been able to interact more with people and bring investors to the Bihar stall. It has been a learning experience for the state and we should prepare ourselves in advance for events like these. We need to be aggressive and beat our own drums. We are still weak in marketing ourselves,” Jaiswal said.