Wednesday, December 28, 2005
Mitsubishi to invest Rs 1665 cr for second unit in Bengal
Our Bureau / Kolkata December 28, 2005
Japan's Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation has send a formal letter to the West Bengal government indicating its desire to set up a second unit at an investment of Rs 1665 crore.
The unit's capacity would be 800,000 tonne. This was announced by the chief minister, Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, at the 151st annual general meeting of the country's oldest chamber of commerce, the Bengal Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
The first unit was set up with an investment of Rs 1475 crore with capacity of 475,000 tonne.
"Mitsubishi officials would be down in the middle of January to finalise and announce the second unit formally but the letter has been sent to my office already," Bhattacharjee said.
Singapore based companies have expressed in investing in a proposed heath city close to the airport, he further added.
The chief minister reiterated that foreign direct investment was welcome in infrastructure and manufacturing but retail was an area which required safeguards to ensure that small players in the supply chain were not killed off.
Bhattacharjee said out of the 56 manufacturing units being restructured by the state, three to four would be closed down while another 3-4 would be run by the government.
The state government would invite private sector investors to take over the rest. Tenders had been floated to sell some units but there had been no response, he said.
The chief minister pointed out that though the state government had got grants from the Centre to promote tea tourism and interesting projects combining tea tourism with golf and other allied activities exist, approval of plantation workers would be required before the projects could take off.
"We would be sitting down for talks with the new board of the plantation workers' association to revive negotiations," Bhattacharjee stated.
As far as tourism was concerned, Bhattacharjee said the Sunderbans was a difficult destination as the issues involved included border control, coastline management, forest development and ecologically sustainable tourism.
A sub-committee under the Planning Commission would manage the ecologically and economically fragile zone, he said.
Two major education institutes - one an international standards management school by the RPG Group and the other a chapter of the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade on the Eastern Metropolitan bypass (EMB)- would come up soon.
Work at the permanent exhibition ground on EMB opposite the Science City had started.
The Kolkata Maidan beautification scheme would start after the book fair but would exclude the brigade parade ground premises, Bhattacharjee pointed out.
The chief minister expressed grave concern that the position of farmers in developing markets had been further compromised with the continuation of subsidies to farmers in developed countries for eight more years.