Although, the world economy is in doldrums amid the lockdown due to Coronavirus pandemic, the country’s Uttar Pradesh government has decided to offer a special package to investors “disenchanted” with China and eager to shift base to other countries, a senior official said on Friday.

Chief Minister (CM) Yogi Adityanath on Thursday, asked his ministers and senior officials to make all-out efforts to take advantage of this opportunity and to discuss the matter with the embassies of different countries, said officials.

Advertisement

“Many companies appear to be disenchanted with China. If a company or investor wants to invest in the state, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath will give them a special package and facility,” Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Awanish Awasthi said.

CM Yogi Adityanath has asked officials to work out the package, which could be offered to investors in addition to the existing incentives, Awasthi said, adding the Industrial Development and MSME departments have also been asked to come up with a package.

He has tasked Industrial Development Minister Satish Mahana and MSME minister Siddharth Nath Singh to start the process of dialogue with the countries who would be interested in investing the state.

Economic Advisor KV Raju and former Chief Secretary Anup Chandra Pande have been instructed to draft a plan for this.

Uttar Pradesh has the connectivity and the human resources to attract investments, Adityanath has told officials.

The outbreak of coronavirus, in the Chinese city of Wuhan, in December last year has dealt a major blow to the global economy because of lockdowns imposed around the world to contain the virus.

As the world is raising doubts about the China’s transparency in handling the COVID-19 pandemic, Wuhan city, which remained the epi-centre of Coronavirus outbreak for a long time, on Friday abruptly raised its death toll by 50 percent, admitting that many fatal cases were “mistakenly reported” or missed entirely, bringing the total number of deaths in the city to 3,869.

The Wuhan administration took to social media and posted that it had added 1,290 deaths to the tally in the city, where the global pandemic emerged and which has suffered the vast majority of China’s fatalities from COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

This change has raised the nationwide death toll up by nearly 39 per cent to 4,632, based on official national data released earlier on Friday.

City’s epidemic prevention and control headquarters has given several reasons for the missed cases, including the fact that the city’s medical staff were overwhelmed in the early days as infections climbed, leading to “late reporting, omissions or mis-reporting”.

It also cited insufficient testing and treatment facilities, and said some patients died at home and thus their deaths were not properly reported.

The United States (US) led Western nations and organisations have raised doubts about China’s transparency. It has come under increasing pressure over the coronavirus pandemic from worldwide criticism. The US is probing whether the virus actually originated in a Wuhan laboratory.

China also had to shut down its central Hubei province for over two months since January 23. Data released by the Chinese government on Friday showed the country’s GDP took the worst hit since 1976.