The Bengal government will unveil a series of new policies, including an industrial incentive policy and a start-up policy, ahead of Durga Puja as it seeks to boost investment and entrepreneurship, Bengal finance minister Swapan Dasgupta told the Assembly on Thursday.
The Suvendu Adhikari-led BJP government will also introduce a policy to attract global capability centres (GCCs) and promote cloud kitchens, especially to encourage women, the minister added.
Participating in the discussion on the state budget presented on Monday, Dasgupta said his government wants to project the highest GDP growth rate in India over the next four years.
“We want to make the biggest contribution to PM Narendra Modi’s dream of reaching a $5-trillion economy (for India), and the state budget is a step in that direction,” he said.
The budget, which proposes to reintroduce incentives for industry, earmarked an allocation of ₹5,000 crore. Last year, the Mamata Banerjee government scrapped the incentive policy on a retrospective basis to allocate money for social schemes, dealing a blow to Bengal’s attractiveness as an investment destination.
“Within the next three months, before Puja, we will bring the West Bengal Industrial Framework, including the new incentive policy, start-up policy, GCC policy, and a policy on cloud kitchens specially geared towards women,” Dasgupta said on Thursday, adding that Bengal lost out on IT investment due to the absence of a GCC policy.
Earlier, Dasgupta also informed the house that the government would publish a white paper detailing the functioning of all state departments under the previous regime.
The CAG audit report will also be released simultaneously, he said.
“The CAG report will outline the instances of corruption that occurred during the tenure of the previous government,” Dasgupta said at the Assembly.