Tata Investment

Militancy won't rock investment plan: Tata

Top executives of Indian business giant Tata yesterday said the recent rise of militancy in Bangladesh won't discourage them to go ahead with the planned $ 2.5 billion investment as terrorism is now a global problem.

"Terrorism is now a global problem... London is affected, New York affected, New Delhi too. This problem here will not affect our investment," Alan Rosling, executive director of Tata Sons Ltd., told reporters in the city.

His comment came when journalists drew his attention to the matter shortly after a press conference where he elaborated the findings of the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) on economic impact study of Tata's investment in Bangladesh.

Rosling said he is hoping to see one or two key people in the government shortly to sort out a timeframe for resuming fourth round of negotiations on the investment in power, steel and fertiliser sector in next couple of weeks.

He claimed positive outcome in the past meetings, but said the outstanding issues remained to be resolved, including fixing tariff for gas it will purchase and electricity it will sell, gas security, land acquisition, coalmine leasing and fiscal incentive.

He replied in negative when asked if they had any discussion with the opposition on the proposed projects.

"We are discussing with the government and if people of Bangladesh change the government after one year, we believe the successive government will honour the deal. It'll be a deal between Tata and the Bangladesh government," he said.

"This is an unprecedented investment proposal in whole of the South Asia, not only in Bangladesh. Nobody took forward an about $3b investment proposal before," he said.

Replying to a query on cross-border energy trade, Rosling clarified that they are not here to export electricity or gas. "We are here to purchase your gas for generating electricity and setting up world's largest urea fertiliser factory."