NEW DELHI: The two-day Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) attracted investments worth
Rs 3.76 lakh-crore with 188 MoUs and Letters of Intent (LoI). In the last edition of the summit, investment proposals worth Rs 3.42 lakh-crore were generated.
The annual summit was attended by doyens of Indian Industries and hundreds of companies from 35 countries, including the UK, the US, Australia, Korea, Japan, Germany and France. One of the major highlights of the summit was Rs 20,000 crore investment committed over the next three years by Reliance Industry chairman and managing director Mukesh Ambani.
“Reliance will leave no stone unturned to accelerate West Bengal’s growth. Reliance has invested close to Rs 45,000 crore in West Bengal. We plan to invest an additional Rs 20,000 crore in the next 3 years in the state,” said Ambani, the chairman and MD of RIL, at the 7th edition of Bengal Global Business Summit. The fresh investment by the telecom-to-oil conglomerate will be done in three areas-- digital life solutions, retail and bio-energy.
Besides Ambani, other prominent businessmen such as Rishad Premji of Wipro, Sanjiv Goenka of RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group, and Sanjiv Puri of ITC attended the Summit and proposed investment in the state.
Though Gautam Adani, chairman of the Adani group, was conspicuous by his absence, raising doubts over the group’s plan to the Tajpur deep sea port.
The project initially was intended for Adani Ports and SEZ Ltd (APSEZ) in October 2022 as they were the L1 bidder out of two final bids received. JSW Group was also a contender in that round of bidding.
The West Bengal government claimed the event to be a big success, even if the same optimism was not shared by all. The main opposition party in West Bengal – Bharatiya Janata Party – called the summit a wastage of public money.
Adhikari, a former TMC leader who joined BJP before the 2021 state poll, urged the government to disclose the details of implementation of the proposed investments amounting to nearly Rs 5.7 lakh crore announced in the previous editions of BGBS. Not deterred by the criticism, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said the state will become an economic powerhouse in the coming days.
The West Bengal economy has grown at a nominal rate of 9.5% and a real rate 4.2% in the last five years, data from RBI shows. The capital invested in the state has shown a compounded annual growth rate of 8.8% over a 10-year period to 2019-20, compared to the national average of around 10%.
According to the Department for Promotion of Industries and Internal Trade (DPIIT), West Bengal was among top 10 states to receive FDI from October 2019 to March 2023. It received $1.5 billion in FDI during the period. The top three recipients of FDI during the period were Maharashtra ($54 billion), Karnataka ($44.5 billion) and Gujarat ($32 billion).