West Bengal has secured investments commitments to the tune of at least Rs.250,104 crore, Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee said on Saturday.
Speaking at the concluding day of the two-day Bengal Global Business Summit, Banerjee said, discussions were on for further investments in the State.
“A rough estimate suggests that investment proposals received this year was to the tune of at least Rs 250,104 crore. However, this figure may go up in the coming days as some discussions are already underway,” she told media-persons.
According to Banerjee, the State has not considered Central government projects and proposals to the tune of Rs 50,000 crore that are currently proposed or are underway.
“If we consider that then the amount of investment proposals underway will go up further,” the Chief Minister said.
In the summit concluded last year, Bengal had secured investments to the tune of Rs 243,000 crore, of which proposals worth Rs 95,000 crore have materialised; and the remaining are under process.
In 2017, the summit will be held on January 20 and January 21.
Sectoral Investments
During the summit, investments in manufacturing and infrastructure sectors remained the focus areas with proposals to the tune of Rs 116,000 crore.
Power, IT and telecom and transport department remained the other big draws with proposals across the three coming to close at least Rs 26,350 crore.
Technical education remained another major gainer where investments were made to the tune of Rs 2,000 crore. Investment proposals were also made in other sectors like travel and tourism, fisheries, healthcare and education among others.
Big Corporates
Amongst the major corporates which committed to investments, Purnendu Chatterjee’s The Chatterjee Group was the top draw with a Rs 22,000 crore project to set up a refinery.
This apart, telecom majors like Reliance Jio and Airtel too committed to investments.
Other major companies include Amity University, Ambuja Group, ITC Ltd, Shriram Group, Mitsubishi Corporation and others.
Logistics Hub and other MoUs
The State Transport department, meanwhile, entered into a MoU with the Calcutta Goods Transport Association to set up a logisitics hub at Baidyabati, some 40 kms north of the city, Coming up over 150 acres of land, the logistics hub will entail an estimated investment of Rs 5000 crore. It will be completed in another four years time.
The State also entered into an MoU with China’s Zhongtong and Dedico Transport Pvt Ltd to set up a bus manufacturing unit at Andal. The facility will come up at the industrial park of BAPL’s Aerotropolis project.
MoUs were also entered into with various skill development councils and Maruti Suzuki for technical training of local youths.
German technology and services major Bosch and US tech giant Hewlett Packard also entered into agreements for various projects. While Bosch would on a pilot basis try out a traffic management app (mobile application); Hewlett Packard would look to work on tele-medicines.