WB: State’s advisory for industrial incentives
Crucial: This will be Mamata’s second meeting with industrialists
Earn brownie points to be eligible for industrial incentives is the message from chief minister Mamata Banerjee. Mamata would be unveiling the parameters at a meeting on July 3.
The guidelines are -—investors have to build roads and infrastructure around the project area, appoint a certain percentage of workers from locals, spend a certain part of their income on corporate social responsibility and appoint some employeess like the clerical staff from the employment bank of the state government.
This will be the second meeting where Mamata would be presiding over the core committee on industries at Writers’ Buildings. The state government has also worked out a formula under which the projects complying with a maximum number of conditions will be eligible for more incentives.
“These conditions were fixed by the finance department. While the first three conditions were finalised quite some time back, the fourth condition relating to employment bank was included following the insistence from the labour department,” said a commerce & industry department official.
When contacted, a city- based industrialist said on condition of anonymity that such proposals are nothing surprising since the state government has been reluctant in offering incentives. “Setting conditions for industrial incentives virtually means discouraging incentives since it is not possible for any industrial house to fulfil so many conditions. But this would be yet another disinvestment factor for big industries in the manufacturing sector after the state government’s hands off land policy and strong anti-special economic zone (SEZ) stand,” he said.
The chief minister had earlier told the chambers of commerce that state government is unable to offer incentives matching with other developed states because of the financial crunch. Though a major part of the draft industrial policy of the state government was made public some time ago, the state government was silent on the incentive clause.
