Bhubaneswar, August 8: The opposition party Biju Janata Dal (BJD) has raised concerns regarding the Odisha government’s investment claims, stating that no significant investments have materialized from investor meetings held over the past two years, both domestically and internationally.
These allegations were made during the ‘Odisha Food Pro 2026’ event, organized by the state government to attract investors in the food processing sector.
Officials reported that the first sector-focused investment roadshow outside Odisha resulted in the signing of 27 Memorandums of Understanding (MOUs) and 12 Investment Intent Forms (IIF), amounting to proposed investments of ₹43,437 crore.
In a press statement, BJD spokesperson and media coordinator Lenin Mohanty highlighted that the state government has conducted meetings with investors in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, and even in Singapore and Japan over the past two years to attract investments.
He pointed out that the government has made grand claims of substantial investments following each event, yet there is no clear accounting of how much of the proposed investment has actually been realized in the state.
Referring to the ‘Utkal Odisha’ Investors Summit held in Bhubaneswar in January 2025, Mohanty noted that the government had claimed to receive investment proposals worth ₹16.73 lakh crore, including ₹12.89 lakh crore in MOUs.
Similarly, after the Hyderabad Investors Meet, the government claimed to have received investment proposals totaling ₹67,000 crore.
Mohanty asserted, “After every investors’ conference, the government claims to have received proposals worth thousands of crores. However, even two years after the BJP government came to power, there is no accountability regarding how much investment has actually occurred in Odisha. It is becoming increasingly clear that the government’s grand claims are merely rhetoric.”
Citing central government data, the BJD leader claimed that Odisha received only ₹39 crore in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) during 2024-25, which accounted for just 0.009 percent of India’s total FDI that year.
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