West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday announced that the state received proposed investments worth over Rs 4.40 lakh crore during the eighth Bengal Global Business Summit, held over two days at the Biswa Bangla Convention Centre in Kolkata.
In terms of investments proposed, this year’s BGBS became one of the most successful business summits since its inception in 2016. “In the earlier seven BGBS, we received more than Rs 19 lakh crore investment proposals. Of this, Rs 13 lakh crore has already been implemented, while the remaining Rs 6 lakh crore is currently in progress,” the chief minister stated.
The investments in the 2025 BGBS were committed across multiple sectors, including manufacturing, power and energy, the knowledge economy, IT and ITes, tourism, agri and allied, etc.
The biggest of the investments was committed by Mukesh Ambani, who proposed to make a further investment of Rs 50,000 crore to take Reliance’s total investment in West Bengal to Rs 1 lakh crore. JSW Group chairman Sajjan Jindal announced two powerplants worth Rs 16,000 crore.
“They [Reliance] have plans to do other things as well. They discussed that in a one-to-one meeting,” the chief minister stated in her speech during the valedictory session. She added, “Sajan Jindal ji is also interested in developing Andal airport and in the power sector as well.”
The first half of the second day of the BGBS included 16 sectoral sessions, roundtables with participating countries and B2B and B2G meetings at the Biswa Bangla Mela Prangan and the convention centre.
The sectoral sessions were about logistics, defence engineering, advanced manufacturing, higher education, technical education, sustainability, MSME and Textiles, among others. Suggestions coming out of the discussions of the sectoral sessions would be sent to the respective departments of the state government for their implementation.
Harshavardhan Neotia, the chairman of Ambuja Neotia Group and co-chairman of the state government’s education sub-committee, shared that five key recommendations emerged from the sectoral sessions on education.
The focus is on reshaping West Bengal’s education sector to envision the future of its students, making higher education more student-centric, fostering research and innovation, strengthening academia-industry collaboration for smoother workforce integration, and embracing internationalisation to stay aligned with global advancements.
“The education sector is taking the decisive role, in both private and government institutions, to improve quality of education and availability of seats,” Neotia said. “The education sector plays an important role in the economic growth of the state,” he added.
During the valedictory sessions, Vandana Yadav, Principal Secretary of West Bengal’s Department of Industry, Commerce & Enterprises, facilitated the exchange of multiple memorandums of understanding (MoUs) and letters of award.
