Washington/Bengaluru, Jul 2 (IANS): Showcasing Karnataka as a favourite investment destination in India, Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy on Tuesday invited US businesses to invest in the southern state.

"I seek your investments in our state, which offers huge opportunities in manufacturing and services sectors for US businesses," Kumaraswamy told investors at a seminar in Maryland's Silver Spring near Washington.

Though on a week-long private visit to the US since June 29, the Chief Minister addressed US investors and NRIs at the seminar on "New business opportunities in Karnataka", organised by the US-India Small and Medium Enterprise Council.

H D Kumaraswamy at Maryland's Silver Spring near Washington

H D Kumaraswamy in New Jersey earlier

H D Kumaraswamy with Dr Arathi Krishna, secretary, Indian Overseas Congress

According to a copy of his speech shared with media by the Chief Minister's Office in Bengaluru, Kumaraswamy invited US businesses to participate in the 'Global Investors' Meet' the state would host in January 2020 on opportunities, incentives and facilities it offers to potential investors.

"I seek your participation to make the Global Investors' Meet a success as it is meant to attract investments from domestic and overseas firms with global linkages for job creation," he said.

Holding his state was ready for business as never before, the Chief Minister said his coalition government made doing business easier and smarter by ensuring 98.6 per cent compliance to the Business Reforms Action Plan norms.

"Our government is drafting a new industrial policy for 2019-24 to offer a robust ecosystem to spur economic growth, create jobs and make the state a global manufacturing and services hub," he told the gathering.

Claiming that Karnataka was ranked first in the country to attract investments and Bengaluru rated as the world's amost dynamic city, Kumaraswamy said the state's growth was due to its pro-active, business-friendly policies, good infrastructure, skilled manpower and ecosystem for nurturing innovation.

"Karnataka contributes 50 per cent to the country's machine tool production, 39 per cent to IT exports, 67 per cent to making aircraft and helicopters for defence services and 33 per cent to biotech exports," he said.

The state is also at the forefront of next-gen technology such as block chain, additive manufacturing, 3D printing, robotics, nano-technology, medical technology and genetic engineering, he said.

"We are undertaking comprehensive reforms to ensure seamless and time-bound processes for project approval, grant of statutory permissions and licenses. Our transparent policy initiatives are aimed at providing support to new industries and entrepreneurs.

"We are determined to ensure our state leads in the Fourth Industrial Revolution and use the power of big data, high computing capacity, artificial intelligence and analytics to digitise manufacturing in the state," he added.

Kumaraswamy’s pet project ‘Compete with China’, announced in the budget, hopes to create manufacturing clusters in select districts creating employment while pushing the state into becoming a manufacturing hub.

“Karnataka is now ready for business as never before. We have made doing business easier and smarter by ensuring 98.6 per cent compliance to provisions of Business Reforms Action Plan. We are also undertaking comprehensive reforms to ensure seamless and time-bound processes for project approval, the grant of various statutory permissions, and licences,” CM Kumaraswamy said.

“To attract further investment, job creation, establish global linkages for the state, the ‘Global Investors Meet’ will be organised next year in January. I seek your active participation to make the Global Investors Meet a grand success,” he added.

Dr Arathi Krishna, secretary, Indian Overseas Congress, Puneet Kundal, Embassy of Washington, Rajan Natarajan, deputy secretary, State of Maryland, and others were present.