With India and China engaged in a border stand-off in Sikkim, Ahmedabad's hopes of reviving its sister city agreement with Guangzhou has taken a hit, along with many other projects.
While the MoUs signed between Ahmedabad and Guangzhou (for the sister city project) and Gujarat and Guangdong (for the sister state project) on September 17, 2014, are gathering dust, several efforts of the state government to reach out to that city's authorities have met with a lukewarm response.
The MoUs were signed amid much brouhaha during Chinese President Xi Jinping's visit to Ahmedabad, within a few months after Narendra Modi took over as the Prime Minister. The last that the state government heard anything on the project from the Chinese side was in 2015.
It may be noted that the then Chief Minister Anandiben Patel, along with a large entourage of senior state bureaucrats and top business leaders, had visited China in May 2015 to give a further boost to the sister city/state MoUs and to clinch more partnership projects. In response to her visit, in November 2015, a Chinese delegation had visited the city, the last time anyone turned up from the other side to follow up on the MoUs.
While the only Chinese investment that has come to Gujarat since 2015 is the SAIC's Rs 2,000-crore plant at Halol on Wednesday, no official that DNA spoke to could give a concrete reason for the lack of follow-up on other projects from the Chinese side.
A senior official in the Gujarat government said, "We have tried initiating correspondence with the authorities concerned there, but never received a noteworthy response. One company had come forward to set up a waste-to-energy plant in Ahmedabad, but they wanted to call the shots and wanted to be nominated instead of going through the bidding process. The Gujarat government's policy only supports competitive bidding, so we had to turn them down."
