Investments worth over Rs 43,000 cr possible in Bengal freight corridor
Over Rs 43,000 crore worth of investments could be drawn into Bengal in the next three to five years as a result of the proposed industrial growth corridor between Haldia and Durgapur.
An electrified, high-speed, freight-only corridor from Dankuni in Bengal’s Hooghly district to Ludhiana in Punjab will boost the proposed industrial growth corridor of the state. Warehousing also has massive potential, with the availability of 12-13 million square feet in the Dankuni-Haldia-Kharagpur-Kalyani-Durgapur sector, and huge investments can already be envisioned. Amazon and Flipkart have already made their huge logistics hubs operational in the state.
It can also be highlighted that the state had a positive growth of 1.2 per cent (that is, percentage growth in the gross state domestic product, or GSDP) when the country’s economy contracted by more than 7 per cent (percentage shrinking in the gross domestic product, or GDP) during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Along with that, there has been a recent rise of interest in building data centres and ethanol projects in Bengal.
The Jangal Sundari Karmanagari is also being developed as an integrated manufacturing cluster on an industrial township model on 2,483 acres in Purulia district.
Asian Highway projects connecting neighbouring countries such as Nepal, Bangladesh and Myanmar through the districts of north Bengal are also under construction, which would give the state’s economy a major boost.
The government released a report on ‘Future Mobility’ that envisions Bengal as a manufacturing hub for electric vehicles (EV) and battery storage by 2024. The state government had come up with an EV Policy in June.
