Kolkata: Bengal govt is framing rules to roll out incentives aimed at attracting industrial investment, finance minister Swapan Dasgupta said at an Assocham family business conclave in the city on Wednesday. He said the incentive structure must be comparable to those in neighbouring Assam and Odisha to ensure fair competition for investors. The state has earmarked Rs 5,000 crore in the budget to incentivise fresh investments.“I understand that we must make the structure and the govt incentives on a par with the rest of the neighbouring states. We should have a level playing field. Both Odisha and Assam, our immediate two neighbouring states, have grown sufficiently in self-confidence while we have declined,” Dasgupta said.While presenting the budget on Monday, Dasgupta announced that the govt would introduce a ‘West Bengal Investment Promotion Framework’ to drive economic growth, boost industrial investment and create jobs. The plan will focus on industrial development using a cluster approach along industrial corridors.Industry bodies have been urging the reinstatement of industrial incentives after the change of govt, arguing that this would restore investor confidence and provide policy certainty. Dasgupta agreed that Bengal may need to go beyond parity to recover lost ground. “Actually, it is Bengal which needs to give extra (incentives to industry compared with Odisha and Assam) just to catch up to where we have gone behind.”He blamed earlier administrations for de-industrialisation and poor financial management. “We have suffered a problem of woefully mismanaged public finances, which resulted in a crippling public debt. More importantly, we suffered from the problem of a very hostile anti-business environment,” he said.Dasgupta said the new govt’s key task is to signal a major shift in public culture and economic stance. “We are pro-business and unequivocally so, emphatically so, pro-business. We want to link our economy to the national economy. I think it was that disengagement from the national economy which cost us a lot,” he said.
