Tata's B'desh investment depends on elections

SINGAPORE: Tata Group will await the outcome of elections in neighboring Bangladesh to decide whether $3 bn investments proposed, the biggest by the group overseas, will be moved out of south Asia.

`We have a strong commitment to south Asia, which is our home base, but we are also businessmen,'' Alan Rosling, executive director at Tata Sons, the holding company for the Tata Group of companies, said in Singapore. ``We have to have projects that are commercially viable. If we can't make progress in Bangladesh, there will be opportunities elsewhere.''

Tata Group, with interests ranging from computer software to steel, plans to set up a steel plant with an annual capacity of 2.4 million metric tons. It plans to run two power plants, a fertilizer plant making one million metric tons of urea annually and an opencast coal mine in Bangladesh.

The projects, first proposed in October 2004 and revised in April this year to reflect the Tata Group's higher financial commitment, are aimed at expanding the group's manufacturing footprint beyond India, while giving Bangladesh a buyer for its untapped gas.