Bengaluru hampered by infrastructural constraints: Minister

Bengaluru, the capital of Karnataka and known as the country's Silicon Valley, suffers from infrastructural deficiency, the state's Minister for Large and Medium Industries R V Deshpande said today. "I admit that Bengaluru has infrastructure concerns. The development of infrastructure did not take place in pace with the industrial investment which took place there," he said at the Invest Karnataka roadshow here.

He said that the state was making all efforts to ease infrastructure problems, including starting of the phase two of the Metro project. Inviting industrialists from Kolkata to attend the investment meet in Bengaluru in February 2017, Deshpande said Karnataka has benefitted from the fact that successive governments in the state have supported industrialisation.

The minister said investments into the state started to pour in from 1991 ever since the start of liberalisation in India. He said another advantage which the state enjoyed was that development of industries in the state has been cluster-wise. The state is looking for investments in textiles, agriculture and food processing from West Bengal. Some noted companies from Bengal making investments there are ITC (vegetables dehydration plant) and Shree Cements (Rs 1,500 crore investments).