State govt reengages Ernst & Young to invite investments

Ranchi: The Hemant Soren government rehired Ernst & Young (EY), a consultancy firm, for drawing investments into the state after the firm’s contract, drawn in 2016 by the erstwhile Raghubar Das government, ended in 2019.
The appointment of EY was approved by the state department of industries in November last year. The team will comprise at least 10 expert consultants and has started working from February 15.The tenure of engagement of the consultancy is one year when government will pay the firm approximately Rs 4.34 crore.
EY had assisted the Das government in hosting Momentum Jharkhand Global Investors’ Summit in 2017, the agriculture and food processing summit in 2018. The firm had also helped the Das government in setting up overseas meetings with prospective investors in the USA, China and Singapore and host road shows in New Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata in the run up to the summit. The firm’s contract with the state industries department ended in late 2019.
“A need was felt for roping in experts for providing technical expertise for investment promotions and facilitating ease of doing business. The current EY team is smaller in comparison to the one which assisted the department earlier,” said industries director Jitendra Kumar Singh.
Notably, the Das government had claimed that the 2017 summit had fetched Jharkhand investment proposals to the tune of Rs 1 lakh crore. Then in the opposition, the JMM and Congress had termed the exercise a waste of public money, a money spinner for local ministers and had demanded that a whitepaper be issued on the expenses incurred by the state exchequer. Chief minister Hemant Soren holds the industries portfolio in the incumbent government.
EY will also assist the department in improving the state’s parameters for the annual EODB rankings, hosted and published by the central department of promotion of industry and internal trade. Jharkhand was ranked fifth in the national rankings for the year 2019, the announcement of which was made last year.
Meanwhile, industrialists said EY’s past performances are not up to the mark. “The single window cell which has been commissioned is inefficient. There is no synergy and clearances are not issued within the mandatory 45-day time frame. There is also widespread corruption persisting within the department,” said a local industrialist, who is a former officer of the Federation of Jharkhand Chamber of Commerce and Industries, on condition of anonymity.