The West Bengal government will shortly finalise the execution of the proposed Calcutta-Haldia expressway, possibly through the joint venture route.
This was disclosed by the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation chairman, Somnath Chatterjee, here on his return from East and South East Asia, where he led a high level industry delegation.
State principal secretary for industries S N Roy will finalise the project by the end of this month, he said.
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There are plans to integrate the Durgapur expressway with the proposed Calcutta-Siliguri expressway.
The Delhi-based consultant Engineers Ltd is expected to submit a report on such a prospect to the state government in the first week of November.
The high point of the chairmans visit was the trip to Japan where he held one-to-one meetings with top corporates like Mitsubishi, Marubeni, Itochu, Toyo and Sumitomo.
Mitsubishi is in the process of setting up a $450 million PTA project at Haldia, the highest single overseas investment from Japan. Chatterjee said that Toyo Engineering Corporation was interested in setting up a monorail project in the state.
All the Japanese companies are not really worried about modes of financing projects in the state, as they are confident of funding it themselves, he said.
Chatterjee also indicated that he was expecting at least two large investment projects to come into the state by the turn of the year.
Moreover, the Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry has tied up with the Singapore-based Regional Institute of Environment Technology to set up an environment management centre at the Indian Chamber of Commerce.
Those who accompanied the chairman were S N Roy, state prinicpal secretary for industries; D P Patra, managing director, WBIDC; Nandan Bhattacharjee , MD, Webel; D Sengupta, MD, I-Win; A K Mahapatra, M D Webcon; Harsh Neotia of Ganapati Greenfields; Gaurav Swarup and Nazeeb Arif of Indian Chamber of Commerce; Bikram Dasgupta; M K Somani; M M Saraf; S K Bajoria and B D Bose.