The $11-billion Adani Group, which has interests ranging from ports and energy to real estate, announced an investment of ₹55,000 crore over the next five years in Gujarat.
Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani announced this during the ongoing Vibrant Gujarat Summit in Ahmedabad on Friday. Speaking at the summit, in the presence of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Adani said that his conglomerate had invested ₹50,000 crore in its home state over the last five years and would be accelerating the pace of investments over the next five years to come.
The proposed investments include a hybrid solar power park in Khavda, which would be the largest of its kind in the world. This project would entail an investment of around ₹30,000 crore. Apart from this mega renewable energy project, the group is also looking to establish a data center park in Mundra, a copper smelting and refining project with a capacity of one million tonnes per annum; a cement and clinker manufacturing unit; a lithium ion battery manufacturing complex and expansion of the existing photovoltaic cells manufacturing capacity in the state.
These projects, put together, would help generate employment for around 50,000 people, Adani said. The proposed job creation plans by the group would be music to the ears of the government, which has been focusing on finding new avenues for employment generation, even as it gears up to face the next general elections in a few months from now.
On January 17, the Adani Group and German chemical company, BASF announced that they had signed a memorandum of understanding to jointly evaluate an investment in the acrylics value chain. The proposed site for the manufacturing project is Mundra in Gujarat, where the Adani Group runs a commercial port. The investment envisaged through the joint venture company was around ₹16,000 crore, according to a joint statement issued by the two entities. This would be the largest investment by BASF in India, the statement said. It added that the German multinational would own majority stake in the proposed joint venture.
The Adani Group is clearly signalling its intent to embark on a massive capital expenditure program through is recent announcements. Earlier this month it announced that it would be investing ₹70,000 crore in Andhra Pradesh over the next 20 years to develop the digital and energy infrastructure of the state and create 100,000 direct and indirect jobs in the state.
