Adani Group to invest Rs 30,000 crore in Kerala over five years

The ports-to-energy conglomerate will also invest in a logistics and e-commerce hub in the city of Kochi, and the group’s cement-handling capacity in the city Kochi will also be scaled up, Adani said.

The investments in Thiruvananthapuram airport will expand the facilities to handle 12 million passengers from the present 4.5 million passengers annually, he said.

“Under the leadership of Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and former Chief Minister the late Oommen Chandy, the Vizhinjam port works have progressed steadily. Vizhinjam made history by docking the largest container ship with 24,000 containers recently,” he said.

The Kerala government is organising the two-day summit in a bid to attract domestic and internal investors in the state, with a particular focus on tourism, food processing, health innovations, fintech, aerospace, defence, and sustainable technologies.

With the summit, the state is also making an attempt at shunning its old image of being a destination that may not have been the friendliest to big businesses. Organised by the Kerala government’s industries department, the event is scheduled to have 28 sessions that will be attended by representatives from six countries. More than 3,000 people are attending the conference.

“The changes we have brought about now are not incremental but substantial… We have ensured that no investor coming to Kerala will have to face the cobweb of procedural delays and meet the barriers of red tape. We have made major strides in simplifying procedures as regards investments,” said Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan.

(The reporter is in Kochi, Kerala, at the invitation of the Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation)