Kolkata, Dec 4 A total of 2,227 companies have shifted their base from West Bengal to other states during the last five years from 2019 to 2024, according to the statistics of the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs.
Out of the 2,227 companies, 39 are enlisted with the Mumbai Stock Exchange.
The Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs has informed this based on the specific four questions by the BJP Rajya Sabha member Samik Bhattacharya in the matter.
Speaking to IANS on Wednesday, Bhattacharya said that besides seeking specific numbers on this count he also submitted a question on the reasons for shifting of the bases by these corporate entities to other states.
To that particular question, the Union Ministry of Corporate Affairs has replied that under Section 13(4) of the Companies Act, 2013 a corporate entity has the freedom to shift their registration from one office to another and there are several reasons for that shifting.
The reasons include flexibility in operations, smooth management, cost of company administration and better infrastructure facilities, among others.
According to Bhattacharya, the statistics reveal the poor state of affairs in the field of investors’ confidence.
“It also proves how fruitless exercise is the annual extravagant Bengal Global Business Summit. Investors have abandoned West Bengal as an investment destination for a long time. Now even existing investors have started quitting the state,” Bhattacharya said.
According to him, there is no industrial policy of the state government which is resulting in such a negative trend. “What happened over the proposed Tata Motors small car project at Singur in Hooghly district first eroded the investors’ confidence. Now the anti-industry policies of the state government are prompting existing units to shift their bases,” Bhattacharya said.
However, Trinamool Congress leader Kunal Ghosh said that such statistics lack credibility. “There was a setback during the COVID-19 lockdown period. However, after that there had been improvements in both investments and employment generation in West Bengal,” he said.
--IANS
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