Ranchi, (IANS) : Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley on Thursday appealed to business organisations to invest in Jharkhand as the state has an investor-friendly government.

“We have a stable government in the state which has made economic development as its core issue. Jharkhand is one of the few states of the country which has immense potential in growth in different sectors like manufacturing, agriculture and others,” said Jaitley while addressing investors here at the Global Investors Summit titled ‘Momentum Jharkhand’.

He said Jharkhand’s potential has not been exploited as it should have been.

“Investment trickled into the state earlier due to mineral resources but the full potential could not be utilised due to two reasons. The flawed economic policies of the previous governments and agenda of winning election was social engineering. Economic development was not an agenda in the past.”

Jaitley said people of the state had hoped that creation of a separate state would allow Jharkhand to grow faster but due to political instability and corruption, the state failed to achieve the desired results.

“The investors do not want to invest in such situation,” he said, adding that “Jharkhand is now maturing in its politics and policy-making with a stable government”.

“Jharkhand is one the few states which can pride itself as a manufacturing states where the contribution of the industrial sector is more than that of the services sector, therefore, the latter offers ample scope for development.”

While elaborating upon the potential of Jharkhand, he said: “Jamshedpur was the first planned e-city of the country which is far more than smart cities concept. In 1928, India won the Hockey Olympic gold and the team was led by a tribal hockey player of the state.”

Union Ministers Nitin Gadkari, M. Venkaiah Naidu, Piyush Goyal, Smriti Irani, Sudarshan Bhagat and Jayant Sinha were present at the meet along with business tycoons Ratan Tata, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Sashi Ruia, Naveen Jindal and Anil Aggarwal, among others.

The event also witnessed participation from 26 countries with Japan, Mongolia, Tunisia and Czech Republic present as partner countries and represented at the function by their ambassadors.