‘Bengal aims at 14% growth rate’

Telling horror stories — of skeletons being dug out from fields, ‘fascist’ attitude of past government and votes being rigged — run the risk of turning off prospective investors. Or, it might drive home the point how hard the task is before Mamata Banerjee to turnaround the state of West Bengal and make it people-friendly and investor-friendly.

Mamata Banerjee’s trusted lieutenant and state finance minister Amit Mitra told a gathering of some top industrialists of the country, most of whom count him as a friend, that Mamata Banerjee and her team is working overnight, putting in anywhere between 12 hours to 16 hours a day to undo everything that was wrong with the state under years of Left rule.

Mitra said the state government was aiming at an economic growth rate of 14% this fiscal. “We are aiming at a growth rate of 14% in the state. Both social and physical infrastructures are the key for development,” Mitra said.

He said the government will invest about Rs2,200 crore in infrastructure.

“Chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s objective is to create one million jobs in the next 10 years,” he said.

“In Bengal people didn’t cast their votes, it was polled. Several skeletons were dug up recently from the backyards of a CPIM leader. The Left Front government was running fascist government where party’s local committees decided which case the police should file. With Mamata Banerjee, there is a new hope,” Mitra told members of the national executive committee of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce of India (FICCI).
Mitra waxed eloquent about the virtues of the new chief minister of the state. “Mamata Banerjee is putting in 16 hours a day; me and my colleagues in the finance ministry are putting in 14-15 years,” Mitra said.