Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath yesterday inaugurated a Rs 1,170 crore plant of Pepsico’s bottling major Varun Beverages in his pocket borough of Gorakhpur district.
The 48-acre plant, which was commissioned in April 2024, manufactures carbonated soft drinks, energy drinks, juices apart from an array of dairy products.
Varun Beverages accounts for more than 90 percent of Pepsico’s beverage sales volume in India.
In his address, Yogi said UP has emerged as a preferred investment destination owing to the ‘ease of doing business’ quotient and good law and order.
“UP netted investment worth Rs 40 trillion at the Global Investors Summit in February 2023. Of these, the state launched projects of Rs 10 trillion in February 2024. Now, projects of Rs 10 trillion are in the pipeline and we will launch them anytime soon,” he added.
He said the state is promoting entrepreneurship and self employment to create private sector jobs in addition to the government jobs.
“Earlier, the youth of UP were forced to migrate to other states and countries for employment. Now, they are getting good jobs locally,” he added.
The plant has come up in the Gorakhpur Industrial Development Authority (GIDA), which has so far witnessed total investment of nearly Rs 12,000 crore.
GIDA has proposed several projects including plastic park, flatted factory, garment park, compressed biogas plant etc to boost industrial growth in the region.
“Investment comes only when there is a sense of security and good law and order,” Yogi said while flaying those who criticised the state government’s ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards crimes and criminals.
He stressed upon the imperatives of a robust land bank and infra for industrialisation. He claimed UP has liberalised industrial policies and procedures viz. single window clearance, digital platforms, monitoring of MoUs etc.
Meanwhile, the CM exhorted for increasing milk production in Eastern UP districts for higher rural income and farmers’ prosperity.
Yogi said the state has integrated 20 million youth with the job market while 500,000 youth were provided with self employment opportunities.
“Now, UP has launched a scheme to provide Rs 5 lakh interest free loan to youth to set up their ventures. This amount will be raised to Rs 10 lakh in the next phase,” he said, adding UP’s One District One Product (ODOP) scheme has now become a national brand.