It was chief minister Mamata Banerjee?s first meeting with industrialists, and coming as it did after the Singur Bill, there was some apprehension about the state government?s land policy.
It was articulated by several industrialists, and particularly by ITC chairman YC Deveshwar who said the company keen on investing into food processing in the state but that getting land was a problem. ?It is possible to buy small pieces of land but buying large plots is difficult. We will try to buy land but it will be difficult to find investors if procurement is difficult,? he said. Deveshwar, like several others, sought some facilitation from the government in buying land.
The CM clarified that the government had decided, at least for now, that it?s better for industry to buy land directly from land-owners. ?We can?t forcefully acquire land, that much is clear to me, it will lead to another disaster,? she said.
But in the same breath, she also assuaged industry captains that her government was setting up a land bank to help investors.
While Bengal Inc attended in strength, the biggest presence from outside the state were that of Adi Godrej, chairman of the Godrej Group, and Shivinder Singh of Fortis Hospitals. Godrej described the industrial climate of the state as refreshing and said his company had lined up more investment proposals for West Bengal. The Group has already invested almost R2,000 crore in agri-business and real estate. ?I will ask CII members to look at West Bengal,? he promised. To the CM, Godrej suggested the government take up a challenge to double state GDP growth in five years; he also asked the state government to look at repealing the Urban Land Ceiling Act and the APMC Act.
In a ?hurry? to send signals about the state?s proactive attitude to the industry leaders, Banerjee on the sport formed a 25 member core committee comprising mainly representatives of chambers of commerce and other industry bodies. The committee, which she described as ?your cabinet? will meet every fortnight to sort out all disputes and differences across the table.
?It will be like your own Cabinet, you run it. I will be out of this committee, but of course I will be with you? The whole idea is I don?t want the investors to run around from one place to another and get harassed… I want to cut out the red tape,? she said.
The committee will also have the state commerce and industries and IT minister Partha Chattopadhyay, state finance minister Amit Mitra and a few departmental secretaries as members. Industry leaders raised concerns about the infrastructure in the state.