Buddhadeb holds talks with Salim Group reps

Kolkata, Jul 01: West Bengal Chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacherjee today held an hour-long meeting with the representative of multi-billion dollar Salim Group of Industries of Indonesia and reviewed the progress of its multi-dimensional investment proposals in the state.

Despite being a weekly holiday in the state government offices today, the Chief Minister went to the Writers Building and met the senior representative of the Salim Group Prasun Mukherjee to discuss various aspects of their proposals for setting up different industries in the state, besides the allocation of land.

Later briefing newsmen about the meeting, Mr Mukherjee said he had assured the Chief Minister of submitting a detailed report of the Group's total investment proposals within the next fortnight.

"I have also drawn his attention towards the timely allocation of suitable land for each project," Mr Mukherjee said adding that to begin with they might start with two projects - construction of roads and development of the Haldia Special Economic Zone(SEZ) with FDI to the tune of several crores of rupees.

"Specially for Haldia SEZ we require land near the main road," Mr Mukherjee pointed out and described his meeting with Mr Bhattacherjee as very satisfactory.

Incidentally, the largest Indonesian business conglomerate - Salim Group - under the Chairmanship of Mr Beni Santossa following his meeting with the Chief minister last year had promised to make large investment to the tune of several million dollars in West Bengal within the next few years in real estate, health, manufacturing, retail and hospitality industries.

Accordingly they had indentified several land in 24 Parganas, Howrah, Hooghly and Nadia districts for industrial purposes and wanted to purchase them outright amending the state government's land ceiling act.

UNI