August 10, 2020: State Finance and Industry minister Amit Mitra on Saturday urged industries to come forward with serious inputs for firming up the logistics policy framework. Estimates put the market size of Bengal’s logistics sector at $20 billion which makes it a very attractive investment proposition for the industry. “Logistics will play a major role in Bengal’s GDP growth as the state has infinite possibilities having the third largest road coverage in the country, the highest rail density and high navigable possibilities with 295 rivers. It also has huge employment potential,” said Mitra at the “13th Logistics Colloquium: Interlinkages Beyond Barriers: Port Connectivity, Inland Waterways and Coastal Shipping” organised by CII in virtual mode.
The minister said that the state government is primarily focusing on integrating fragmented logistics sector across multi-modal processes, optimising land cost and capital investments, building logistics-based skill sets and fostering technology adoption. “CII may like to initiate skill creation by training the workforce specialised for the logistics sector,” proposed Mitra. He said that the government is looking for stakeholders to come forward and work in tandem to convert Durgapur, Tajpur, Dankuni, Malda and Siliguri areas into logistic clusters catering to multifarious industries like tea, gems and jewellery, petrochemicals, petroleum, food processing etc.
He assured the industry that the upcoming Amritsar-Dankuni corridor on the 2260 acres of land in Raghunathpur and the Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal (BBIN) corridor will provide great value proposition for facilitating warehousing in the state. According to Mitra, the reduction and exemption of aviation taxes in Bengal have given considerable boost to this sector. The report — “Positioning West Bengal as a key Logistics Hub”— prepared by KPMG in the year 2018 has suggested that the state has a huge potential to emerge as the logistics hub of the entire Eastern and North Eastern region of the country.
Source: milleniumpost
