Bengal FM to attend Monday meet at Delhi

West Bengal Finance minister Amit Mitra today said he will attend the state finance minister's meet in Delhi and raise the concerns of the people of the state.
The meeting of state finance ministers has been called by Union Finance Minister Amit Mitra on Monday in the national capital.
"I have received an official invitation from the central finance ministry and at the behest of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, I am going to attend the meeting on Monday," Mitra told PTI on the sidelines of an event here today.
Asked whether he would raise the issue of a three-year moratorium on debt repayment with Jaitley, Mitra said "I will voice the concerns of the people of the state."

After coming to power in May 2011, the Trinamool Congress government had been seeking a moratorium with the UPA-II regime, of which the party was part of a coalition, after which ties snapped.
At the event, Mitra said that the state government had made an interest payment of Rs 77,000 crore to the Centre over three years.

He said had this money been used for capital expenditure instead of making debt repayment, the state domestic product would have risen four-fold.
Mitra said that the state had not defaulted on debt repayment because those who had bought the state's bonds through RBI's competitive bidding had to be repaid as these carried a sovereign guarantee.

"We have managed these with great pain," he added.
Criticising the previous Left Front regime for leaving behind a huge debt burden, Mitra said that the new government had been able to raise its own tax revenue from Rs 21,000 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 40,000 crore in 2012-13.