Calcutta, April 8 :     West Bengal is emerging as a major business hub for infotech companies with domestic and global majors setting up new ventures and expanding existing ones in the state. The bullishness of infotech majors on the state was evident at the annual meeting of Confederation of Indian Industry?s (CII) eastern region chapter today. Seven companies announced investment-cum-expansion plans in the city. These include Computer Maintenance Corporation (CMC), PricewaterhouseCoopers, Tata Consultancy Services, Oracle, Compaq, Iris and NIIT. These infotech giants see Calcutta as one of the best locations in the country, especially for software development and training. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) will invest Rs 15 crore in setting up a new technology centre at Salt Lake. The unit will employ 700 people. CMC, the Rs 340-crore infotech company which expects to achieve a turnover of Rs 700 crore by 2000, has identified eastern region as a major investment spot. Company chairman-cum-managing director S.S. Ghosh said his company is planning to establish an application-specific development centre dedicated to mining, an all-India competence centre in insurance, enterprise resource planning (ERP), education technology and a training unit to support the VLSI programme. Tata Consultancy Service (TCS) will invest Rs 50 crore over two years, generating employment for 1,000 IT professionals. Oracle India will set up a community R&D centre at the PwC facility; Compaq will establish a competence centre along with PwC over 135,000 square feet. NIIT will invest Rs 30 crore between 2000-2003 and Rs 400 crore between 2004-2008. The company plans to float a competence centre for geographical information systems. Besides these, it will identify specific flagship projects for investment. Acknowledging the importance of information technology in development, West Bengal chief minister Jyoti Basu said state government departments will be computerised and the exchange of information made easier to facilitate a strong citizen-government interface. The spread of infotech in government departments will open up a bank of information to people who will have automatic electronic access and the convenience to obtain facts without approaching bureaucrats.