Why No MOUs in Davos? Babu Reveals

The chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu and the IT Minister Nara Lokesh recently flew to Switzerland to take part in the World Economic Forum in Davos. The duo met with the chief executives of HCL, PepsiCo, Cognizant, Wipro and several other global giants on this trip. 

However, in terms of MOUs it was a strangely dull trip for the Andhra Pradesh delegation this time around. Usually, when Chandrababu flies to WEF, he returns with a substantial amount of MOUs. But this time around Andhra Pradesh did not sign any significant agreements with any global giants. 

This raised an interesting doubt about why Chandrababu, who has such good connections at the global level did not make an effort to sign multiple MOUs which is a norm these days. 

In response to this, Babu replied that “There is no need to sign understanding agreements with Indian companies in Davos and it’s only a myth that Davos directly brings money. It could’ve been done here itself. The reason why we go to such global events is for networking and promoting the brand of Andhra Pradesh. We could successfully resurrect the image of Andhra Pradesh through this trip and invite global companies to come to the state under the promise of speed of doing business. This is far more important than any MOU.”

It is true that Babu himself had earlier signed MOU with multiple companies in the past. But he appears to have identified that such understanding agreements did not necessarily mean, confirmed investment to the state. It is more important to put AP on the global map than bring random agreement documents which serve no purpose.