Vijayawada: The suspicion over budget allocations towards payment of incentives to entrepreneurs and diversion of funds came up during the partnership summits held in Visakhapatnam.
The state government spent Rs 28 crore for the partnership summit held in Visakhapatnam, from January 10 to 12, last year.
In reply to an RTI application, the government stated that an event management company was paid Rs 1 crore for the dance performance they organised during the summit.
All the expenditure documents were in the form of memos, but not in the form of GOs. It took nearly eight months for the applicants to get all these details under the RTI Act.
In the last year’s summit, the state government stated that around 2,000 delegates attended the summit and signed 361 MoUs worth Rs 4,76,878 crore.
The Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) was paid Rs 7.97 crore to organise the event and Rs 42.98 lakh was paid to encompass events of New Delhi, and to organise the inaugural and cultural programme on January 10, according to the information provided by the Directorate of Industries.
The amount paid to CII was released under the scheme of Incentives for Industrial Promotion (Advertisements, sales, publicity expenses) to CII (Southern region), Hyderabad, for temporary hanger structure and for the exhibition pavilion, according to the information provided by the then Secretary (Industries) S.S. Rawat. Similarly, the Directorate of Industries paid Rs. 1,03,05,000 towards executing digital campaign for Sunrise Andhra Pradesh Investments Meet-2016, Mr. Rawat stated.
The details provided by Industries department suggested that fund diversion took place during the summit. The Industries department is yet to reveal several facts under the RTI Act, an NRI entrepreneur told this correspondent.
He has packed off his proposal of setting up a novel project in Krishna district and is returning to the US, following redtapism in the Industries department and also ambiguity over getting incentives. Keeping all these factors into consideration, the state government has decided to release half of the incentive amount, according to a bureaucrat in the Secretariat.
