Nri To Bring In$2.56b Investment

Purnedu Chatterjee, a high-profile New York based non-resident Indian (NRI) and adviser to the Quantum Group of Funds managed by Soros Fund Management, has lined up nearly $ 2.56 billion of investment in India in all of which he will have a major stake.

Chatterjee said that work on his current projects worth over Rs 6,000 crore is in progress. These are in areas such as petrochemicals and power, paper and polymers, refinery and real estate, software and information technology.

While West Bengal gets the lions share of the proposed investment, quite a few projects are meant for other states, he said.

 

The projects being considered by the Chatterjee Group (TCG) are: Haldia Petrochemicals, Haldia Polyparks, TCG Software. The group took up a stake In Rayalseema Paper in Andhra Pradesh when it made a turnaround and came out of the Bureau of Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR).

The Rs 5,170 crore Haldia Petrochemical Ltd (HPL) comes at the top of Chatterjees list. It is billed to usher in a new industrial era for the beleaguered state of West Bengal which has slipped a few places in the nations industrial sweepstakes.

Chatterjee is upbeat about HPL. Nearly 10,000 people are now working there, and not a single manday has been lost, he told India Abroad News Service. By West Bengals standards, this is quite remarkable.

The Project, in which TCG is collaborating with the Tatas and the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation (WBIDC), is scheduled to start commercial production by the end of 1999.

Renowned construction companies, including Bechtel and Toyo Engineering, and a host of subcontractors are working round the clock to meet the deadlines. It looks all signed and sealed; what remains to be seen is when its delivered, said an observer.

When it was pointed out that the Tatas have made allegations of payment default by TCG, Chatterjee said warily, But what can I do?

You dont expect me to contradict and clarify everything that comes out in the media? Besides, Tatas often tend to air even their family differences in public at slight provocations.

During his recent visit to Calcutta to participate in the U.S. Investment Summit, The Emerging East last December, Chatterjee finalised another mega project with the West Bengal government for a state-of-the-art electronics complex at Salt Lake City named Asian Gateway.

The project, spread over a sprawling 318 acres, will have the latest information technology facilities and all the supporting services, including residential accommodation for the people works for a TCG associate company and was one of the designers of Londons famed Canary Wheif.

TCG has about $2.5 billion of investment worldwide, of which nearly 70 per cent is in the US. Its interest ranges from running a large fleet of planes (under R&D Falcon, in which Chatterjee has a shareholding) to owning an equally large number of oil drilling rigs.

In India, Chatterjee has a stake in Smifs Capital Market of less than 15 per cent and put in about $20 million into the $60 million Indocean Venture Fund.

Asked about his involement in Indian bourses, he says, rather evasively, that the stake money normally varies between $100 million and $200 million. He does not visualise India suffering the same kind of East Asian trauma, but would not say that the latest depreciation of the Indian rupee is such a big thing.

You compare it with the extent of inflation during the last six-seven years, and you find that the rupee has gone down much less, he says.

He does not visualise TCS/Soros group as a major player in the Indian capital or currency market in the immediate future. Instead, Chatterjee is now more focussed on investments. The Soros group has recently raised its stake in GIC Asset Management from 33 per cent to 40 per cent. The Soros investment is largely to test the waters, says market analyst Subroto Roy.

Chatterjee, who always provokes extreme opinion, has a backer in Chief Minister Jyoti Basu.

Sujit Poddar, a member of the state governments think-tank, says about Chatterjee: He is the only investor whom I have seen to hand over a cheque of over Rs 2 billion. Thats the highest amount that anyone has actually paid so far in West Bengal.