West Bengal to form working group with Yunan province

The contrast in Left Front's policy on foreign direct investment (FDI), at the Centre and state level, appeared a shade more stark with West Bengal chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya putting the blame of sectoral caps on the Union government.

At the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) India-China business conclave, in a bid to woo Chinese capital into the state, Bhattacharya categorically said, "Ours is an open policy. We want private capital."

While the policy of the Left Front government at the state level was in the know of people, Bhattacharya went a step further.

He said, the only restrictions were in some of the public sector undertakings, under the ownership of the Union government and this was due to central government policy but, state public undertaking were spared from such restrictions.

His remarks assume special significance in the wake of the controversy stirred up by the Left Front on the issue of FDI sectoral caps.

The Left Front was completely opposed to the raising sectoral caps in insurance, telecom and civil aviation as proposed by finance minister, P Chidambaram in the Union budget.

On the sidelines of the business conclave, Bhattacharya lost no opportunity and discussed the formation of a working group to study growth and development of economic linkages between Bengal and Yunan, at a provincial level.

The working group would be led by CII and would include business, industry and government representatives from both sides, as transpired at the interaction between the chief minister and vice-governor of Yunan, Shao Qiwei.

Addressing the inaugural session, Bhattacharya charted possible areas for mutual co-operation""world class engineering items, low-cost high value electronic goods, agrarian inputs like fertilisers, irrigation systems, technology transfers, plastic building materials and toy making industry.

Bhattacharya said, discussions were held with Sikkim chief minister, Pawan Chamling for starting infrastructural work around Nathu La, so that border trade with China could be facilitated.

Bhattacharya also requested for direct air link between Kolkata and any province in China, particularly Yunan.

CII and China Council for Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), Yunan Sub-Council yesterday signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for strengthening economic and trade ties between India and China at the India-China business conclave.