West Bengal sticks to anti-Walmart stance

Foreign players like Walmart would not be allowed to enter into the organised food and related products retail segment in the state.

"We do not want foreigners to sell vegetables to us from our farm lands, but wholesale trade might be allowed on an experimental basis", said Budhdhadeb Bhattacharjee, chief minister of West Bengal.

Metro Cash & Carry was allowed to do wholesale food business with city hotels, he added.

He said a huge number of jobs would be lost in the chain between the farmer and the consumer if organised retailers were allowed to step in.

Job losses would also happen in the small markets around the cities, he warned.

However, he said Indian companies could be allowed in the sector with some regulations, provided they did not trade in foodgrains.

Retailers would not be allowed to set shops in the city proper as well, he added at the executive committee meeting of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industries(FICCI).

He said a proper market mechanism had to be developed first to stop the wastage of products being shipped from farm to store.

Around 10 to 30 per cent of the vegetables and foodgrains perished in the process, as the logistics chain was primitive, Bhattacharjee added.

He told the FICCI team that Kolkata needed a greenfield airport though the present capacity of passengers and cargo at the government-owned Kolkata airport was being scaled up.

The aviation minister, Praful Patel, was scheduled to visit Kolkata on September 23 to finalise this, claimed Bhattacharjee.

He claimed that while huge number of man-days were lost in cultivation, the Rs 1 lakh car Tata Motors factory at Singur in the same area would change the quality of life of people there.

He ruled out any further problems in the small car project.

Bhattacharjee highlighted investments flowing into the state's iron and steel sector, the petrochemicals and chemicals sector and the food processing industry.

Six steel companies were acquiring land for projects in the districts of Purulia, Bardhaman and West Midnapore.

The state would develop Haldia, Durgapur and Siliguri for IT parks, as Rajarhat, Bantala, and Salt Lake zones were fully occupied.

Several special economic zones (SEZs) were expected in the electronics space, he said.

Videocon, Rolta and Wipro were top runners for potential anchor tenants.

He called for more public private partnerships in fields like education, especially in Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) near the upcoming manufacturing hubs, to train local youth.

He defended the proposed chemical hub at Nayachar and said West Bengal needed polymers for textiles, butadine for rubber, and chemicals for pharmaceutical industries.

Mitshubishi chemicals at Haldia was expanding operations but more inputs were required.

The chemical hub would provide this and boost industrialization.

Geological Survey of India (GSI) was conducting a study to judge if Nayachar island was fit for the chemical hub.

The state develop infrastructure like a deep sea port near Sagar island and a minor port at Kulpi, both approved by the Prime Minister's office.

A Kolkata mass transit system using Czech technology was planned, for which Delhi-based CES was conducting the feasibility study.

Talks were in final stage with Japanese agencies on the east-west Metro railway corridor in Kolkata.

Bhattacharjee admitted that the policy of land acquisition and rehabilitation had to be reworked as also the Centre's policy on SEZs, taking into account factors like eligibility criteria for SEZ-based industries, technology transfer and export promotion besides fixation of the land ceiling for SEZs.

FICCI made a presentation at the meeting, and identified manufacturing, transportation and logistics, education, and health-care, as four strategic areas for sustainable inclusive growth of the state.