St Sops Delay Mckinsey Study
Global consultants McKinsey & Co, appointed by the West Bengal government to advise and recommend a strategy for charting the future course of industrialisation in the state, will commence work on the state only after the state government puts together the new incentive scheme.
Although McKinsey had been formally roped in for the task more than six months ago, plans to commence work had been thrown off gear due to the new sales tax policy of uniform floor rates for all states, announced in January this year, say state government official sources. Secondly, it had also been decided that sales tax components in the incentive schemes would have to be done away with.
However, it is believed that various recommendations by task forces formed by chambers of commerce on the incentive scheme are to be published next week. It would also need to be ascertained whether the rest of the states in the country were following the principle of eschewing any sales tax related incentive in their schemes, said sources at the chambers of commerce.
Most of the recommendations for incentives given by the chambers are based on areas where the state government can decide on independently_-such as electricity tariff and land. The incentive scheme is, therefore, slated to be ready earliest by the month of July, after which the consultant firm would begin work.
The four areas on which McKinsey would be working on include information technology, petrochemical and downstream industries, agri and food processing industries and infrastructure.
It has also been decided that the state would eschew the vision framework for the millennium, adopted by most Indian states, and move on straight to tackle the ground realities of ushering in a business revolution.
According to state officials, the McKinsey team of around 7 professionals is likely to be headed by senior partner Ashvin Adarkar who had earlier made a representation on the state at the investors' summit `Destination West Bengal' at Raichak, in January 1999 or the McKinsey managing director Ranjit Pandit himself. The team will work with the state government for a year.
Besides providing policy level advice to the government in these four sectors, the consultants' team will help the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation in re-engineering investor process, upgrade the agency's one stop clearance window `Silpabandhu' alongwith providing implementation counselling to the WBIDC.
The state had sought professional help so that visible investments are attracted from large companies in the domestic and foreign corporate sector.