Gandhinagar: Newly appointed Additional Chief Secretary (Industries & Mines) S J Haider is set to focus on organising the next Vibrant Gujarat Global Investment Summit that’s likely to be held in January 2024, just before the parliamentary polls.

Though the state government has not officially announced that the summit will be held in January 2024, sources have told the Secretariat that the decision in this regard has been taken and will likely be made public soon.

The Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit is a biennial event that is held by the state government to attract Industries and investments in the state since 2003. The last summit was held in January 2019 before the Lok Sabha polls.

In 2021, the summit could not be held due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The government had announced to hold the summit in 2022 and all preparations were made and even the mega exhibition was partially done, but the same had to be scrapped after the arrival of highly infectious Omicron variant of the Covid-19.

In January 2023, the summit could not be held because the state had gone for the assembly polls in December 2022.

Now, before the next Lok Sabha polls, the state government wants to hold a mega event to showcase Gujarat and therefore a global event is being planned.

The appointment of Mr Haider, a 1991 batch Gujarat cadre IAS officer known for his go getter approach, is an indication that the government wants to resume the holding of its flagship summit since Mr Haider has been involved in its organising since the beginning.

Mr Haider has been the architect of the mega exhibition that is held along with the summit in which more than a million visitors visit it to see the display of thousands of products and the state’s huge industrial base.