A while ago, we opened the bids for the Financial Hub. Offers have been received from United Bank of India (UBI), United Commercial Bank (UCo), National Insurance Company (NIC), West Bengal Financial Corporation (WBFC), West Bengal Infrastructure Development & Financial Corporation (WBIDFC) and SREI. The scrutiny of the bids will of course take some time. There may also be few overlaps in plot location preferences and procedures for resolving these are slightly lengthy.
Earlier, Allahabad Bank and SBI had already taken land in/near the Financial Hub. Few, like LIC Housing and Bank of India have requested for a little more time. Few have asked for a different sized plot. These will be considered in due course.
The Financial Hub is achieving critical mass. Now we must try harder to really make it a functioning international financial centre.
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Highly encouraging Sir.
ReplyDeleteThis is the beginning of the results of your hard labour and wonderful leadership.
Congratulations, Sir
This is really classic. Just purely awesome. :-).
ReplyDeleteLets do the scrutiny and overlap resolution a little fast and see to it that they start operations within a reasonable time frame , say 1 year. An implemented financial hub with multiple skyscrapers will obviously attract more investments than a proposed financial hub.
I was hoping about Calcutta Stock Exchange but sadly that name is missing. If LIC HF and BoI comes, that will be big ticket names outside the state to attract private investments like ICICI, Yes Bank, DHFL, Barclays, Nomura etc.
Are we planning to do another roadshow in Bombay? Unless some big national names in Pvt sectors come up, attracting international investments will be tough.
We can also start focusing on the KPOs operating in the financial sector. Bombay has them in dozens.
However, a fantastic website should be the first priority, I feel.
Debashis da,
ReplyDeleteExcellent news - all because of you and your team's effort. Let us keep our hopes alive for a resurgent Bengal.
Kaushik
Thank you - all of you - for the encouragement. Yes, I'm trying hard. We plan to invite the next EOI shortly so that institutions that needed more time may get an opportunity.
ReplyDeleteGreat .... simply great.... :-)
DeleteBest of luck for the next round as well.
Great Decision Sir,
ReplyDeleteHow about considering to include the role of developers too in the next round of EOI? No matter if it is on price bid basis for them.
But this may give liverage to such institutions who are interested in Built up Space only and not willing to buy land and develop thereafter.
Wishing full success to your sincere efforts for developing the Hub.
Regards
Ramesh Mehra
A few others have also suggested this, ie, land through transparent bidding to developers who can only allot to financial institutions. We may look at this model in due course in a Board meeting.
ReplyDeleteAre we planning to have an increase in FAR for the financial hub? Also do we have plans to request the companies to have a time bound completion of projects?
ReplyDeleteMumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has done something like this for plots in Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC).
http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_mmrda-relief-for-builders-in-bkc_1755880
Also an article which gives a nice idea of the past, present and future of BKC.
http://www.moneycontrol.com/master_your_money/stocks_news_consumption.php?autono=706104
Respected Sir
ReplyDeleteI may be wrong but i think WBIDFC is West Bengal 'Infrastructure' Development Finance Corporation and not West Bengal 'Industrial' Development & Financial Corporation as mentioned in the post.
Thank you. You are right. I just corrected it.
DeleteSir,
ReplyDeleteIt is great to hear that our financial hub is on the way of becoming a grand success.I would like to put some idea in form of a question to you : Can we directly send proposals to some big financial institutions ?I was thinking that if we can tap at least 1/2 international big names in the hub initially then going forward it may help to attract other international institutions easily.For that we can approach some big financial institutions which have long/historic presence in kolkata example:HSBC.If we can have institutions like HSBC in the hub from the start then in future we can easily have some other big names.
Yes, we are have been trying for that too. We will soon intensify that when we bring out the next phase of EOI.
ReplyDeleteJust learnt that hon'ble WB Minister of UD visiting London and will have some informal meetings with bankers there as well. Can we do some prep work early with those bankers so that meeting with Minister actually results in actually sign some formal agreements instead of just exchange of promises? May be we can get engaged though MEA.
DeleteThis Articcle Is Very Useful In My Life ...Thanks For Post This Article..Thanks To West Bengal Financial Corporation
ReplyDelete