By IANS
Kolkata : West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said Friday that no investors have rolled back their proposals after a series of unsavoury incidents in Singur and Nandigram over land acquisition.
“It’s true that the agitation of the rival political forces over land for industries has sent a wrong signal about Bengal nationally as well as in abroad. But not a single corporate house has taken back their investment proposal from Bengal,” Bhattacharjee said at the 153rd annual general meeting of the Bengal Chambers of Commerce and Industry (BCCI).
Speaking on the investment scenario, he said major investments have already come this year in the iron and steel, petrochemical and food processing sectors in West Bengal.
“This apart, many US-based IT firms are also interested to come to West Bengal with their bouquet of investment in the knowledge-based industry,” he said.
“Our IT townshipds at Sector V (in Salt Lake city in Kolkata) and adjoining Rajarhat are already saturated with several small, medium and big IT companies. We are now looking at other places such as Durgapur and Siliguri to accommodate multinational IT players who are now interested to come here.
“Presently we are acquiring land near Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International (NSCBI) Airport to set up an IT complex there,” Bhattacharjee said, adding that Videocon is also chipping in with major investment for setting up an electronic complex at Siliguri in northern Bengal.
Pointing out the development in infrastructure, the chief minister said India should spend more of its gross domestic product (GDP) to develop infrastructure.
“Presently, we spend only 3.6 percent of our total GDP for infrastructure while China spends 9 percent for this particular purpose,” he said, welcoming public private partnerships in infrastructure development projects in West Bengal.
Bhattacharjee also pointed out three major projects like NSCBI airport modernisation, a deep-sea port in the Bay of Bengal and East-West Metro railway are yet to take off in Bengal.
The centre has sanctioned these three infrastructure development projects in West Bengal, he said.