Howrah to get investment worth Rs 12260 cr in next 2 to 3 years

Kolkata: With initiatives taken by the Mamata Banerjee government to attract investment, Howrah district is going to get an investment worth Rs 12260 crore creating more than 1.52 lakh employment opportunities in the next two to three years.

At the same time proposals have been received for setting up two more industrial parks under the Scheme for Approved Industrial Park (SAIP). It will attract an investment of another Rs 1000 crore and lead to generation of another 15,000 employment opportunities.

This comes when Howrah district has already received an investment worth Rs. 5,613 crore and more than 22,000 job opportunities were created in the past one and a half years.

The MSME and Textile department of the Bengal government has organised its second synergy or business facilitation conclave in Howrah on Tuesday. The synergy is getting organised for every district ahead of the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) that is going to be held on April 20 and 21, 2022.

In a bid to bring back the glory of Howrah, which was once called the Sheffield of India, senior ministers including MSME minister Chandranath Sinha, Minister of State for MSME Srikanta Mahato, Public Health Engineering minister Pulak Roy and Cooperation minister Arup Roy attended the seminar. Chief Secretary HK Dwivedi along with Principal Secretary of MSME department Rajesh Pandey were also present in the meeting.

Highlighting the initiatives taken up by the state government for infrastructure development, the Chief Secretary said: "Our only aim is to ensure a conducive environment for investors and the state government has ensured infrastructure development, employment linked skill development programme, better online services, process simplification and time bound service delivery".

According to a communique of the state government, proposals for an investment of nearly Rs 12,260 crore has been received for the next two to three years and it would lead to generation of over 1.52 lakhs employment opportunities.

While holding the administrative review meeting in Howrah a few weeks ago, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had requested the entrepreneurs to attend the synergy where they would get all support of the state administration to sort out all their existing issues related to setting up and running industrial units. More than 450 entrepreneurs participated in the synergy on Tuesday and interacted directly with representatives of 20 departments, banks and service providers to get help in running their units. Around 115 applications for permission, no objection certificate, licenses were received and 38 of them were settled on spot and the remaining would be disposed of soon.

Only in Howrah district, entrepreneurs received bank credit worth Rs 16,000 crore in the past one-and-a-half-year including Rs 6463.45 crore from April to September in 2021.

As many as 39 cases of sanction and disbursement of loan worth Rs 7.6 crore took place on Tuesday. Around 22 units have also received the benefits of Rs 2.43 crore under Banglashree scheme.