Gateway to the East

Geographically and Locationally West Bengal offers unique advantages to entrepreneurs. From the mountains to the sea, West Bengal is the gateway to the Eastern and North-Eastern region of India. And its hinterland is the nation itself. The state is rich in natural resources such as coal and other minerals, abundant good quality water, virgin countryside, a self-sufficient and fast modernising agricultural base and a tradition of trail-blazing industrial enterprises.
Traditionally, West Bengal has pioneers industrial development in the country. Tea, Jute, Textiles, Coal, Engineering, Petroleum Refining, Railways, Iron and Steel, Power generation and transmission, Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals - in all these fields, West Bengal led the way. West Bengal has a very high rate of self-employment per capita. Some of India's best business talents are to be found here.
With a lot of private and public sector enterprise making things happen. Major national and international industrial houses have already chosen West Bengal as their ideal location for units ranging from hi-tech electronics complexes to sophisticated, hygienic food products manufacture-West Bengal's climate now nourishes all.
The industrialist will find a ready base for successful enterprise. Financial institutions, state support programmes, tax incentives on one hand. And infrastructural facilities, consultancy services, job training, research and development, easy access to regional, national and global markets and of course raw material, technological and human resources of the right kind. All traditional industries are today undergoing modernisation and expansion and both production and productivity are rising rapidly. Nothing reflects the new growth surge in West Bengal more than a Metro train bulleting through an underground tunnel in Calcutta and the soaring, slender columns of the second Hooghly Bridge that now spans the river Hooghly.
West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation(WBIDC) Limited is a premier state level agency which facilitates the growth and promotion of medium and large-scale industries in West Bengal. This agency has obtained the required mandate to implement changes, making it easier for investors to obtain all clearances.
The core competencies of WBIDC include:-

Financing medium scale industries
Providing escort services and facilitation of investment proposals
Promotion of joint sector and assisted sector units in important industry segments
Development of business, trade and industrial links with foreign institutions and companies
Conceptualisation of new projects and entrepreneurship development
Diversification of activities to areas like merchant banking venture capital, infrastructure and exports
Management of state incentives to new units
Dissemination of information to high-light the brightening prospects of industrialisation in the state

The state has 17 districts excluding the city of Calcutta of these the largest in terms of population and area is the district of Midnapore. The state enjoys political stability and good law and order situation. The Government has taken a positive approach towards industrial development and declared its investment friendly Economic policy in 1994. For the purpose of incentives, districts of the state have been reorganised into:

Group A - Calcutta Municipal Corporation
Group B- South and North 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly, Burdwan, Midnapore and Nadia
Group C - Bankura, Purulia, Murshidabad, Birbhum, North and South Dinajpur, Malda, Coochbehar, Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling

WBIDC has been playing a pro-active role in assisting implementation of new investments through ‘Shilpabandhu’. ‘Shilpabandhu’, an extremely resourceful single window agency, was set up to further expedite the process of growth. It extends assistance to entrepreneurs in setting up medium and large scale industries. It co-ordinates the functions of different departments to procure the necessary clearances and inputs for them. The agency’s functions are manned by senior officials from concerned departments, like the Directorate of Industries, The Directorate of commercial Taxes, state pollution control Board, Land Revenue Department, Calcutta Telephones,West Bengal Telecom, Food Processing Department and State Electricity Board. A one-stop-shop unit, with computers maintaining data-banks and NICNET facilities, ‘Shilpabandhu’ has user-friendly packages for investors, providing them with information, guidance, identification of key areas of investment and development assistance.
Services offered by ‘Shilpabandhu’

Clearance from the Foreign Investment Promotional Board, New Delhi
Clearance from the secretariat for Industrial Assistance, New Delhi.
Clearance from the Pollution Control Board
All clearances related to power
Clearances and assistance related to telecommunications
Fiscal benefits including reduction in sales taxes
Identification and allotment of land and infrastructural facilities
Assistance in mutation and conversion of land
Guidance to entrepreneurs on investment prospects in more than 200 ready projects developed by WBIDC

With an industrial climate conducive for investments, it is little wonder that some of the biggest international and domestic corporate names have made West Bengal their home. The list includes Matsushita, Mitsubishi chemical corporation, Itochu, Marubeni, Sumitomo, Sumikin Bussan, Nishi Lowai, Toyo, Siemens, Vesuvius, caltax, Motorola, ABB, Computer Associates, Bayer, Lurgi, Daelim, Balmer-Lawrie, VXL Landis and GYR, BOC, Price waterhouse, Alcoa, Dole, Deutsche Bank, George Soros, TCG, Pepsico India, Tata, SAIL, Birla Group, ACC, INDAL, Exide, Hindustan Lever, RPG, India Foils, ITC, Duncan, Gujarat Ambuja and many more.
WBIDC now holds equity in some of the very important projects in the state such as Haldia Petrochemicals Limited, Mitsubishi Chemical Corporation, PTA India Limited, Pacific cotspin etc. The corporation has continued to play the role of the agency responsible for the disbursement of incentives to the new units or expansion cases. The corporation has been consistently improving the quality of its assets, by ensuring that loans are disbursed only against the sound and viable projects. WBIDC has been able to ensure more than 90 percent recovering against its current project loans. The recovery performance continues to improve during the current year, despite recessionary conditions in the national economy. With its improved financial position, the corporation has diversified into the new areas such as short Term Loans and Bills Discounting. The recovering rate is 100 percent in these schemes.
WBIDC continued to participate in a number of Trade Fairs to promote the industrial investment in the state of West Bengal. With a view to disseminating correct information about the improving industrial scenario an Investors’ Meet called ‘Destination West Bengal’ was already organised by the corporation at Raichak. The ‘highlight’ of the event was the presentation of an independent view of the investors’ perspective by MCkinsey & Company Inc. Follow up action is being taken on the suggestions which were evolved during the event. With a view to increasing interaction with foreign business, state Government functionaries and select representatives of the industry have undertaken investment promotion tours to a few countries in Europe and South-East Asia in the recent past. A number of foreign delegations have also visited the state, continued efforts are being made to consolidate the relations with foreign business so that more and more foreign corporates repose confidence in the investment opportunities of West Bengal. ‘Shilpabandhu’ has been maintaining a computerised data bank which is also linked with NICNET. All information has been made available on the Internet for the benefit of investors. Besides, ‘Shilpabandhu’ has also compiled a shelf of projects for guidance of new entrepreneurs with the brief project profiles.
To encourage private sector participation in key infrastructure projects on a commercial format, a joint-sector company has been formed by WBIDC with ICICI called ‘I-WIN’. This organisation has drawn up several project profiles in the fields of transportation corridors, sector specific industrial estates, business
centres, water supply projects etc. which are being marketed to attract investors from within the country and outside.
WBIDC is making consistent efforts to strengthen its core business activities while, on the other hand, it continues to play the role of a catalyst in the process of attracting fresh industrial investments in the state. Efforts have been directed towards increasing the efficiency of the administrative machinery and maximising application of computers in day to day work. The corporation has diversified its activities to extending short term loans to eligible companies, bill discounting and in some cases sanctioning the term loan to small scale units. In the coming years, greater attention will be given to further improving the performance of ‘Shilpabandhu’ enhancement of financial outlay for term
loans, increase in equity contribution to upcoming companies, and introduction of ‘e-governance’ system for transparent interface with customers as well as for sharing industry related information with the public.
Infrastructural Advantages

Best state in India in terms of availability of electric power and water
Adequate housing facilities and office space at reasonable cost
Highly efficient telecommunications network - Calcutta the first Indian metro to be on the cellular phone map
Improvement of existing roads and construction of new flyovers and super-highways
India's only Metro Rail System and best airport
Dedicated industrial growth centres
550 Km. North-South Expressway under planning
Information Technology park in Calcutta
Asia's biggest Leather processing complex
Food processing park.
Export promotion Industrial Park
A satellite city for Calcutta
Developed banking and financial infrastructure.

The focus areas for investment screened and approved by UNIDO

Metal production and processing
Petrochemical and downstream products
Electronics and Telecommunications
Information Technology
Leather and Leather Goods
Floriculture
Food processing
Textiles
Jute products
Aquaculture

Infrastructure projects of I-WIN

North-South corridor Development project
Water supply project in Haldia
Development of plant at Haldia
Information superhighway for West Bengal
Reclamation of Northern canal system of Calcutta
New Calcutta Township at Rajarhat
Floriculture Infrastructure project
Industrial complex with Emphasis on Textile sector near Kharagpur
Venture capital Fund information Technology Sector
Financial services centre on E M Bypass in Calcutta

Electric Trolley Bus based on Mass Transport system in Calcutta