West Bengal's development story in numbers

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Ahead of the three-day Bengal Global Business Summit 2016, the state is hard-selling its growth story. Primary among the maze of numbers that are being highlighted to project a shining West Bengal is a high GVA (Gross Value Added) growth rate of 10.48 per cent in 2014-15, compared to the national average of 7.5 per cent.

However, in a recent polemic, Sidharth Nath Singh, Bharatiya Janata Party National Secretary, termed the growth figures to be "blatant distortion of statistics". West Bengal has woken up to the fact that industrialisation is key to development, as is evident from its eleventh rank in the recent World Bank report on state-wise rankings for ease of doing business.

On the fiscal front, the state's tax reforms are slowly paying off as the ratio of its own tax revenue to GSDP has been on the rise ever since Amit Mitra took charge of the state's finance ministry. Yet, Singh's claim cannot be dismissed. West Bengal's debt to GSDP ratio remains significantly high and its own tax revenue to GSDP ratio is much lower than other major states. A look at the growth story of West Bengal through numbers.