The Reliance Industries Chairman and MD Mukesh Ambani whose company has invested Rs 45,000 crore in West Bengal, mainly in telecom business, on Tuesday announced an additional Rs 20,000-crore investment over the next three years.
Ambani said the fresh investment will be in the areas of digital life solutions, retail and bio-energy. “Bengal has been one of the largest investment destinations for Reliance... We plan to invest an additional Rs 20,000 crore in Bengal in the next three years for enhancing digital life solutions, augmenting Reliance Retail footprint and on bio-energy,” he said, adding, “Reliance will leave no stone
unturned to accelerate Bengal’s growth.”
Meanwhile politics invaded the realms of economics with Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Tuesday choosing to accuse the BJP Government of depriving Bengal of its dues even as she plunked the topic on an international podium meant to draw business investment in Bengal.
Even as the who’s who of world business including delegates from 35 countries listened to her impromptu speech at the much touted Bengal Global Business Summit the Chief Minister said how her State had become a victim of arbitrary implementation of the GST regime.
“Though I should not tell it here ... I am sorry to say that we are not getting our share in the GST which is a tax collected from our State but does not return to us ... the poor people have worked in the 100-days’ work scheme but are not getting paid for their labour ... still we are helping them out from our” limited resources, Banerjee said even as she listed the “game changers,” (read achievements) that make Bengal an automatic choice for the investors.
The Chief Minister on Tuesday inaugurated the seventh two-day world business summit in an apparent bid to draw investment in what the critics call an industry-starved State that thrive not on employment creation but on social schemes and doles.
Speaking about a divisive “narrative” being created by some political parties the Chief Minister in her bid to market Bengal’s inclusive and progressive culture said, “in Bengal we live together and there is no divide-and-rule politics here,” invoking Poet Laureate Rabindranath Tagore who said “where the land is not broken up into fragments for domestic quarrels.”
Playing up Bengal’s business-friendly atmosphere — with an upcoming deep sea port at Tajpur, newly discovered world’s second biggest coal reserve at Deucha Pachami that will solve the power issues 100 years, eastern freight corridor, Bengal Silicon Valley a replica of its American counterpart, the Asia’s biggest leather complex etc — Banerjee reminded how in Bengal people were not divided along religious lines.