Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu’s efforts to invite Ivanka Trump to Amaravathi did not yield results. According to reports, Ivanka turned down the CM plea to come to Andhra Pradesh. This is the news doing rounds recently and by seeing this, one gets the impression that AP tried hard to bring Ivanka who is coming to Hyderabad for GES. But there are reports that much before Ivanka’s trip to Hyderabad was finalized, Babu tried to bring her to Visakhapatnam (Not Amaravathi), however the grand vision failed to materialize because of various reasons. Details as below.
Much before Hyderabad, AP govt had pitched hard for the GES to be held at Visakhapatnam. The state was quick to respond to a call from NITI Aayog regarding this and provide the venue at Visakhapatnam. In a PPT presentation to NITI Aayog in August 2016, they (representatives of AP govt) explained to NITI Aayog about how they are planning to have GES at Visakhapatnam and emphasized the city is chosen as smart city by central government. They in fact impressed and stunned NITI Aayog members when they suggested AP is planning to lease luxury cruise liners from Europe to accommodate delegates. Though the idea of having a floating five star cruise hotels to accommodate delegates attending GES was astounding, finally the idea of having GES at Visakhapatnam was turned down because of various reasons.
Mainly, security and scarcity of good hotels at Vizag are the reasons for not choosing Vizag as venue for GES summit. Krishna Kishore, CEO of AP economic development board told, we made since efforts but could not succeed because of lack of global scale infrastructure. Now the AP government is planing to build a convention centre per global standards. Had this been successful, Andhra Pradesh government, “brand building” efforts would have been on grand display and AP could have got opportunity to interact with potential global investors and explained about the opportunities in Sun rise state.
