After the outbreak of COVID19, around 100 US companies have expressed their willingness to shift their bases from China to Uttar Pradesh.

The outbreak of coronavirus (COVID19), which has claimed 2.28 lakh people globally and infected 3.19 million, was first identified in China’s Wuhan city on November 17, 2019.

The deadly virus has claimed so far 61,504 people in the United States and infected 1.06 million people.

The interest of the US firms came to light during interactions through a webinar organised by the United States-India Strategic Partnership Forum.

The representatives of the US firms had interactions with the Uttar Pradesh minister for MSMEs. Siddharth Nath Singh on Tuesday, say media reports.

The representative of the companies reportedly showed interest in the fields of scientific instrumentation, logistics, agriculture, electronics, medicine, aviation, food processing MRO, defence and so on.

The companies include Honeywell, Boston Scientific, Cisco Systems, Adobe and Lockheed Martin.

There are also global delivery service providers like FedEx and UPS.

A report quoted Uttar Pradesh minister Singh as saying: “Several companies expressed their interest in leaving China and are looking for other investment destinations, including India.”

“We discussed with them the scope of investment in UP and informed them that the state is home to more than 90 lakh MSMEs and skilled labour,” said Singh.

The minister also claimed: “With a stable government in the state, coupled with creation of a robust support infrastructure in terms of roads, water supply, irrigation capacity and 24×7 power supply, UP is among the frontrunners on the growth trajectory among large states of the nation.”

UP minister Singh along with senior officers including industrial development commissioner Alok Tandon and principal secretary to MSME and exports Navneet Sehgal interacted with the representatives of the companies through webinar.