Mamata Banerjee to visit China in bid to attract investments in West Bengal

West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will be leaving on an eight-day trip to China on Friday in a bid to attract investment in West Bengal.  

Sources at Nabanna, the state secretariat said that she will board the 11.50 pm flight. Other than state finance minister Amit Mitra and Chief Secretary Malay De, others who will be accompanying her include principal secretaries of finance, industries, small and micro enterprises, as well as some industrialists. State security advisor Surajit Kar Purkayastha would also be part of her entourage.

Mamata will be in Beijing between June 23 and June 27. During these days she would meet the communist leaders of the country and some of the industrialists there as well. A number of Memorandum of Understandings are also expected to be signed.

On June 27, the CM and her team of delegates will take a train to Shanghai where they will stay till June 30. Here, she is scheduled to meet a number of prospective investors and also the Mayor of Kunming. On June 30, she would return to Bengal via Singapore.

Earlier too Mamata had intended to visit China but could not owing to some technicalities from the Ministry Of External Affairs because of the not-so-cordial relationship between India and China back then.

While everyone is waiting to see what the outcome of the visit would be, leaders of the Opposition parties are alleging that this trip too would end up futile as her earlier visits to different countries in search of investment in Bengal, they claim, had failed as well.