West Bengal must attract big ticket investments to instill confidence in the minds of investors, industry body Assocham said on Wednesday. "West Bengal should attract big investments which will be a real indication that the state is willing to support it," Assocham secretary general D S Rawat told reporters on the sidelines of a seminar on "Positioning Bengal" here on Wednesday.
"Still the people are very apprehensive of the state government. The state should say come what may they are going to support projects and they would come up on time," Rawat said.
He said given proper opportunities, people would definitely come to Bengal, otherwise all investment proposals would go elsewhere.
Referring to Singur fiasco which drove Tata Motors' Nano project out of West Bengal, Rawat said, "Definitely post Singur, there was a halt in investment proposals and there was suspicion in the minds of the investors about the state of West Bengal." "Lots of people have committed investments in the state. I must say that during the last tenure of the Leftist government lots of investments have flown in and at one stage even Rs 9 lakh crore worth of live projects were there," he said.
There were investment proposals lying in front of the government to the tune of Rs 5.84 lakh crore, he added.
"But those projects are still pending primarily because there is a slowdown globally and secondly people became apprehensive that what has happened to the Nano project should not happen to me and, therefore, wait and watch policy is adopted."