State woos China in Singur

Kolkata: The state is going to send a high-level delegation of Government officials to China to visit the factory of the First Automobile Works (FAW), one of the biggest automobile manufacturers of China. The FAW has expressed interest in setting up a factory at the abandoned site of Tata Motors at Singur in Hooghly district.
The FAW, which has a collaboration with the Ural India Ltd, manufacturers of heavy vehicles, and which was interested in setting up a car manufacturing unit in West Bengal came to Kolkata last November to have a recce of the sites they were offered — Singur, Haldia and Kharagpur. The company was satisfied with the Singur site and it has conveyed its decision to the state government.
“The time has not yet been decided but the government will soon send the team to China to have a recce of their factory and have talks with them,” a senior state government official said on Thursday.
Last November India’s Ambassador to China Nirupama Rao sent a letter to then Chief Secretary Amit Kiran Deb, heaping praise on the Chinese company.
On Thursday, Chairman of Ural India Ltd J. K. Saraf met Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and gave him a proposal of manufacturing buses at his factory at Haldia, which has a facility of manufacturing heavy vehicles like trucks and lorrys. The company has told the chief minister that they were going to manufacture buses at the site and it requested him to buy buses from the company.
Bhattacharjee has acceded to the request. “We have decided to buy 25 buses from the company, which will be AC buses and will have low footboards. They will be added to the existing fleet of Calcutta Tramways Corporation,” Transport Minister Subhas Chakrabarthy said.
About 15 days after the Tata Motors pulled out of Singur, Chakrabarthy had declared that another automobile company will set up their unit at Singur. Bhattacharjee had also said several industrialists have expressed their interest in setting up units at Singur.