Bratya Basu meets IT head honchos

In a bid to ensure flow of investment in the state, the Information Technology (IT) minister Bratya Basu on Tuesday held a meeting with representatives of the leaders in the industry.

There were representatives from fifteen IT giants including Wipro Limited, PricewaterhouseCoopers, ITC Limited, Hewlett Packard Enterprice, HCL Services Limited, Cognizant Technology Solutions and CII Eastern region. There were discussions on the issues including various policies of the state government. Sources said that the representatives of the IT majors have given their suggestions that would help the state government to bring in more investment.

At the same time, the state government has also placed its view on the issues. There was also discussion on start ups. It may be recalled that the Bengal Global Business Summit, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had urged the IT firms to give training to youth under start-up venture. She had also said that she wished to bring back all the IT professionals working in other states to Bengal.

Basu later said the discussions on the points which are relevant to make West Bengal the best IT destination following the guidelines of the Chief Minister have taken place in Tuesday’s meeting.

He said that there will be another meeting with Wipro Limited on the issue of Special Economic Zone (SEZ). He confirmed that the meeting with Google is yet to be fixed.

It is learnt that the representatives of almost all the companies have urged the IT minister that bring in an industry friendly policy that would attract more investment in the state. Sources said that there were talks on the facilities that can be given to attract investment of more IT companies in the state.

It may be mentioned that the many IT companies had shown keen interest in investment in the state during the first term of the Trinamool Congress government. This time with a stable government in West Bengal there is an expectation of more job creation in the IT sector in the state.

The payment of Rs 75 crore by IT giant Wipro Limited to set up its centre in Rajarhat early this year demolishes the claim that the group was trying to pull out of West Bengal. The IT park of Wipro will come up on 50 acres of land. Earlier the company had urged to give SEZ status.