West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee to take her maiden passage to Singapore

KOLKATA: Expectations are naturally huge. So also is the size of the delegation going with West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee on her first overseas trip to Singapore to attract investment.

August 2005 to August 2014 - exactly nine years to date after erstwhile chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee's visit to Singapore, Mamata is making the same journey with a difference.
Apart from select members of her government and party, she is being accompanied by a big enough team of businessmen, each supposedly paying for his own individual passage to and fro, supposedly to engage their counterparts at Singapore in conversation for tie-ups and to explore the possibility of attracting them to Bengal.

The total delegation is about 50 heads, said finance and industry minister Amit Mitra on Thursday.

The "official delegation", said Mitra, will include chief secretary Sanjoy Mitra, some departmental secretaries associated with commerce & industry and one party MP, who it is learnt will be Dipak Adhikary of Tollywood who is more popular among his fans as Deb.

"The official delegation apart, a high-level business delegation will also go at their own cost. This delegation will comprise representatives from all key national chambers of commerce and chambers based in Bengal. This business delegation will have representatives from sectors like energy, real estate, hospitality, entertainment, the manufacturing sector, food processing, fertiliser, tea, civil aviation, IT and health care," Mitra said.

He also disclosed that during her 5-day trip, the chief minister will meet Lee Hsien Loong, prime minister of Singapore and the foreign minister as well.

Some of those from the industry accompanying the chief minister are Sanjay Budhia, managing director, Patton Group, Harshvardhan Neotia, chairman, Ambuja Neotia Group, Sanjiv Goenka, chairman, RPSanjiv Goenka group, Sanjay Jhunjhunwala, CEO of Mani Group, Roopen Roy, president, Indian Chamber of Commerce, CK Dhanuka, chairman, Dhunseri Petrochem & Tea, Sumit Mazumdar, CII president and vicechairman and managing director, TIL, and Gaurav Swarup, managing director, Paharpur Cooling Towers.

Successive chief ministers from Bengal have wooed businessmen at Singapore, right from the days of Jyoti Basu, the Marxist chief minister.

Prime Ministers of Singapore, like Goh Chok Tong had even visited Kolkata, while a couple of businessmen from South East Asia had during the 34-year Left rule showed initial interest too. However, nothing much had emerged from all that.

Hopes run high at Nabanna, the administrative headquarters of the West Bengal government now, that Mamata's overture will make that critical difference, where Left leaders had failed.

"The huge group of business representatives going with her would help in making that possible, because businessmen anywhere bond with businessmen much more easily than with the political establishment. But Mamata herself is so intense about her making attracting investment to Bengal, that there is no doubt that the team will come back successful," said a local business captain.