West Bengal has secured investments to the tune of nearly ₹243,000 crore over the last two days, West Bengal Chief Minister, Mamata Banerjee, said on Thursday.

Speaking at the concluding ceremony of the two-day-long Bengal Global Business Summit, Banerjee said the summit was “immensely successful” and the amount of investments secured is expected to move up further in the coming days. “I am speaking on the basis of just the MoUs signed so far. The amount of investments can move up further,” she told reporters on the sidelines of the summit.

Investments are expected across all major sectors like tourism, hospitality, financial services, among others.

Big investments

According to Banerjee, NTPC has proposed a ₹20,000 crore investment in the State; private sector commitments include the Singapore-based Suvarna group’s ₹1,000 crore and Capital Singapore’s commitment of around ₹2,500 crore. Forum group’s investment is in the range of ₹4,000 crore, Mani group’s commitment totals ₹2,500 crore followed by several others. Amongst the major commitments from the private sector is the Subhash Chandra-owned Essel Group.

Essel Group plan

The Essel Group today submitted a Letter of Intent (LOI) to the West Bengal government to develop two smart cities — Salt Lake and Rajarhat — at an estimated cost of ₹10,000 crore. It will also invest another ₹10,000 crore through competitive bidding under Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) model and/or EPC (Engineering, procurement and construction) model. The company is targeting projects like toll roads, sanitation and water treatment, waste to energy, and metro/monorails/LRT ones.

BAPL signs MoU

Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Ltd (BAPL) — developing the airport-city at Andal in Durgapur, some 185 km from the city — also signed two MoUs, one with Wadia-owned GoAIr and Pinnacle Air. GoAir is likely to introduce flights between Durgapur and Delhi soon. Pinnacle Air, will on the other hand, start operations of their non-scheduled airlines through small fixed wing aircrafts. It will connect regional airports of Durgapur (Andal), Bagdogra and Cooch Behar with Kolkata. An agreement was signed between Pinnacle Air with Government of West Bengal and BAPL.

The third MoU was with the SCOMI Group of Malaysia for setting up the mass rapid manufacturing hub service to cater to buses, coaches for metro and monorail services and OEM components.

Banerjee apologised to industrialists for the “financial mismanagement” witnessed during the Left Front regime. She urged businessmen to “overlook the past” and invest in the State.

Road ahead

“Don’t look at the past. Whatever happened is not good. But let us think for today and work for tomorrow,” she said in her closing remarks at the two-day summit here.

Reiterating her stand against “SEZs”, Banerjee clarified that she was willing to give land to IT companies. But her government remains sceptical of the SEZ status.

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