Around the time when West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee was trying to woo investors in Singapore, a group of influential city-based businessmen managed to get an invite for the Chief Minister from a Chinese province, located about 4,000 km north of Singapore.
The Governor of the province Yunnan, Li Ji Heng has not only invited Ms. Banerjee to visit the south-west province of China, but also promised to “positively look” into some investment opportunities in a proposed Chinese industrial park in Bengal, said Centre for Promotion of India-China Cooperation (CPICC), a non-governmental body to boost economic and bilateral trade.
A spokesperson of the Chinese Consulate in Kolkata told The Hindu that Yunnan indeed had “extended” an invite to the Bengal Chief Minister.
The spokesperson confirmed that a meeting between the Kolkata-based business community and the Governor of Yunnan province took place and Ms. Banerjee was informally invited by the province. Investment ties between the extreme southwest province of China and State of West Bengal, as mentioned in the CPICC’s press release, could also be explored, said the spokesperson.
The release said that the Governor has “extended a personal invitation to Ms. Banerjee and requested CPICC chairperson Mahesh Saharia and Wang Xue Feng, the Consul General of China at Kolkata, who also joined the delegation from Beijing for four days, to carry the warm feelings of more than 45 million people of Yunnan to the Chief Minister, the people of West Bengal and North East India.”
The 16-member business delegation included senior industrialists of the city like M K Jalan of Keventers, Arun Poddar of B P Surekha Group and Prasad Kanoria of SREI. Business communities of Kunming (capital of Yunnan) and Kolkata had also discussed several joint venture projects between the countries.
“CPICC has already submitted a proposal to West Bengal’s Industries and Finance Minister Dr Amit Mitra. CPICC believes the next stop for West Bengal Government, after the present visit to Singapore, should be Yunnan in China,” the release said. Part of the ongoing dialogue is also to declare Kolkata and Kunming, capital of Yunnan, as the twin city to enhance business and cooperation.
The trade deficit between the two countries is perennially increasing. According to data released by Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics (DGCI&S) earlier this month, the deficit between the two countries is alarming 36,219.70 million dollar. In 2013-14, while China exported goods worth 51,049.01 million dollars, it imported goods worth 14,829.31 million dollars. The data reveals, India sells one-third of what it buys from China, exactly the way Bangladesh one-third of what it buys from India.
In order to reduce the trade gap and enhance cooperation at multiple levels, a dialogue process focusing on Bengal and Kunming’s priorities at multiple levels was started few years back.
