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Days after Kerala Chief Minister V D Satheesan announced that the Tata Group is set to invest Rs 10000 crore in shipbuilding, the Information and Public Relations wing clarified that the CM meant total investment for multiple projects related to Mission Samudra and not a particular conglomerate. The clarification came following a news report in which a Tata executive denied the developments.
However, the controversy around the investment did not die with I&PRD clarification, as the original agreement between a subsidiary of the Tata Group was related to a boat-building facility and was signed during the Invest Kerala summit conducted by the previous Left Democratic Front Government.
The CM made the claim regarding the investment by the Tata Group in an interview with Bloomberg TV published on July 15.
“Now Tata is ready to invest in shipbuilding. We are ready to provide land for the Tata group to invest Rs 10,000 crore for shipbuilding,” he said in the interview.
Hours later, ET Infra published a report where a Tata executive denied the investment plan. “Possibly, he (CM Satheesan) is either ill-informed or under too much pressure to show results,” the ET Infra report said without mentioning the name of the executive
As per the clarification issued by the I&PRD, the Chief Minister was referring to the promotion strategy under Mission Samudra, which aims to develop Kerala into one of India's leading shipbuilding and maritime industry hubs.
“The Chief Minister's reference to an investment potential of around Rs 10,000 crore was intended to indicate the total scale of investments that the government aims to attract to the state over the coming years through multiple projects and investors. It did not imply that a single investment agreement of this value had been finalised with any one company. As part of this initiative, the government has facilitated a joint venture between Malabar Cements Limited and Artson Engineering Limited, a Tata Projects Group company, to establish a shipbuilding unit at Cochin Port,” the statement said.
Mission Samudra was part of the Congress manifesto, which promised to convert Kerala into a global maritime hub in five years. The government had allotted Rs 400 crore for the project in the recent budget.
However, the clarification of I&PRD also came under scrutiny as the deal between Artson Engineering and Malabar Cements was signed during the Invest Kerala summit organised by the previous LDF government in February 2025. As per the agreement, Artson would invest Rs 500 crore to establish a facility for building boats of a capacity of less than 100 tonnes.
