West Bengal gearing up to welcome new investments: State Fin Min

Some of the other global companies setting up shop in the state are beverage players Pepsi and Coca-Cola that have invested close to Rs 1000 crore, Mitsubishi and Hitachi, Mitra says.

According to Mitra, the setback suffered on the newly launched Durgapur airport will soon be wiped out as there are no regulatory issues as per popular belief, adding he expects more private airlines to start flying out of the airport soon.

On the debt trap that the state is currently into, Mitra says, “we have borrowed Rs 87,000 crore during our term, of which Rs 82,000 has gone into interest payment for the debt left behind by previous government”.

He added that the state has been left in a debt trap but has managed to double tax collection in the last 3 years with plan expenditure growing 6 times in the last 4 years.

On the Goods and Services Tax (GST) bill, Mitra says, “as long as federalism is honoured, Bengal will support GST”.Below is the transcript of Amit Mitra’s interview with CNBC-TV18's Ritu Singh.Q: You are kicking off the second global investor summit in Bengal in January. What is the sales pitch you are taking to the investors, what are the kind of investments you are looking to bring into the state? Could you throw some light on the corporates that you have already spoken to that may invest in Bengal?A: Already as you are aware large number of corporates from Mumbai, Delhi have already invested and others are lining up to invest which you will hear, let me keep it a secret, which you will hear in the Bengal Global Business Summit. But the key point is what is attracting them to Bengal.First of all they are attracted by the growth of Gross Value Added (GVA) or Gross Domestic Product (GDP) or other way you want to put it. Much higher than India on the average; 10.48 percent which you have seen in the news media, way above 7.5 of India but equally so the states that have released their data our study shows that we are practically above in growth rate terms above Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and a little above Andhra Pradesh or almost the same. Unfortunately according to the data available to our effort Gujarat hasn't yet given its data, so I can't compare with Gujarat. But these are big states. So, it is not that we are ahead in growth vis-à-vis India but we are ahead in growth of states which are considered to be important to us. So, therefore that is one thing that is attractive.Second, is clean government. This is a government which has no scope for end seeking because it is a determined effort of Mamata Banerjee, the Chief Minister and I cover now six ministries where we have gone into a complete transparency mode. For example only state in the country where you have to not only apply by a value added tax (VAT), by computers and with digitised signature but only state that gives you back a dematerialised VAT certificate. No other state has been able to do it.You will be happy to know also why entrepreneurs are attracted. Integrated financial management system where every rupee spend of the government is available on the computer system. Only state that has done this is us using the Reserve Bank of India\\'s (RBI) e-Kuber portal. No state has been able to use the e-Kuber yet. What that means is a clean transparent government for which the central government gave us the highest award amongst states for e-taxation. Not only that recently the computer association of India went to us for the integral financial management system.Q: Now is an interesting time. You are heading into state assembly election in 2016. This year has been somewhat slow in industrial activity Tea and Jute your key industries.A: Jute and Tea that you are mentioning I don't think that your listeners know that we had five Tea gardens which were for 25 years closed, we were paying Rs 20 crore to the workers to keep that moving. What did we do. We decided that these are Tea gardens that we cannot run, government can't run them. The only case in India where there was a transparent bidding with KPMG as a transaction advisor selected competitively at all five tea gardens. All on leasehold lands, so we cannot give them freehold, all five have been taken by competitive bidding by private sector. Have we ever heard of that in India.Q: I will come to the issue of stake sale and privatisation and these specific things later.A: But you spoke of Jute. Jute is a traditional industry right now going through a problem because of shortage of raw jute. In fact Bangladesh with whom we have a free-trade agreement has now banned the export of raw jute to Bengal. So, there are many internal issues that are not so simple. But 90 percent of jute mills are working.You know that jute has to be on order from the central government. They have reduced the use of jute bags for food products from 100 percent to 90 percent. And for sugar from 100 percent to 20 percent mandatory only. So, there are many complex issues but come to the industries which don't have these legacy problems those are booming and I will be happy to tell you about them.Q: All of these good things you are talking about the Gross Value Added (GVA) growth, the privatisation, what you are doing in terms of ease of doing business, e-taxation for example which was also cited, then why is it that investors that we speak to still cite land issues, labour issues, militancy in the labours, why are these still big issues, is it a part of miscommunication?A: Yes I think part of it is. There has been a history of the Left Front government for 34 years, that is like a hangover around you. They are not aware because of the past that when we came to office in the previous years 78 lakh man days were lost, this is what they know. However in year before last 5020 man days were lost and last year official record zero man days lost due to strikes. That change those who are aware of are rushing to Bengal. I will give you some details of who have rushed to Bengal right now.Chief Minister inaugurated the plant of Siddharth Birla in our own industrial park. So, where is the land issue? It is the most advanced park. She inaugurated the cement plant in the middle of the Maoist area of what is now called Dalmia India, it used to be Orissa Cement of Puneet Dalmia. Now she inaugurated on January 6 the starting of work of the JSW - the Jindal Steel plant which has issues with coal connectivity and iron ore linkages but they are excited by Bengals growth, to capture that growth. They are investing in a cement plant which is part of the adjustments in the MoU. So, we haven’t done anything out of the way. Emami is investing in a cement plant. So, three big cement players - Puneet Dalmia, Sajjan Jindal and Emami Agarwals investing in cement, making it a major cement production hub in the country.