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West Bengal has the sixth largest economy in India with ?10.49 lakh crore (US$150 billion). It is primarily dependent on agriculture and medium-sized industry, although services and heavy industries play an increasingly significant role in the economy of the state.Years after independence, West Bengal was still dependent on the central government for meeting its demands for food as production remained stagnant and the Green Revolution bypassed the state. However, there has been a significant spurt in food production since the 1980s. The state is now one of the few with a surplus, producing nearly 20% of the rice and 33% of the potato yield in 2004, despite accounting for only 7.55% of the population of India. The state's total financial debt stood at ?1,918 billion (US$27 billion) as of 2011.
Agriculture and Livestock Agriculture accounts for the largest share of the labour force. It contributed around 18.7% to the gross state domestic product (GSDP) in 2009–10.14 A plurality of the state's population are peasant farmers. Rice and potato are considered to be the principal food crops of West Bengal. West Bengal is the largest producer of rice in India with an annual output of around 16.1 million tonnes in FY 2015-16, and the second-largest producer of potatoes in India with an average annual output of 11 million tonnes in FY 15. 14 Rice, potato, jute, sugarcane and wheat are the top five crops of the state. 14 Other major food crops include maize, pulses, oil seeds, wheat, barley, and vegetables. The state supplies nearly 90% of the potato requirement and 66% of the jute requirements of India. Tea is another important cash crop.Darjeeling is globally recognised for tea plantation of the acclaimed Darjeeling Tea variety .West Bengal, the second largest tea-producing state in India, produced 329.3 million kg of tea in 2014-15, accounting for 27.8 percent of the country's total tea production. In 2015-16, West Bengal produced approximately 2.38 mt of sugarcane and 3.1 mt of fruits. The state is the largest vegetables producing state in India with 25466.8 thousand MT of production in 2012-13. West Bengal is one of the largest fish producing states in India. West Bengal accounts for nearly 10% of the country's edible oil production. The state produced a total of 1.63 million tonnes of fish in 2015-16 compared to a production of 1.61 million tonnes during 2014-15, retaining second spot after Andhra Pradesh in fish production. West Bengal produced around 4961 thousand tonnes of milk in FY14-15. The state is the third largest meat producing state in the country (including poultry) after Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, producing 0.648 million tonnes of meat in 2012-13 and it is the largest producer of goat meat.
Industry State industries are mostly localised in the Kolkata region, the mineral-rich western highlands, and Haldia port region. There are up to 10,000 registered factories in the state and the West Bengal state government has opened Shilpa Sathi, a single window agency in order to provide investors with all kinds of assistance in establishing and running industrial units.Kolkata is noted as one of the major centres for industries including the jute industry. There are numerous steel plants in the state apart from the alloy steel plant at Durgapur. The centre has established a number of industries in the areas of tea, sugar, chemicals and fertilisers. Natural resources like tea and jute in and nearby parts have made West Bengal a major centre for the jute and tea industries. West Bengal is at the forefronts of leather processing and leather goods manufacturing and has around 666 units producing leather and leather related goods. Currently, 22-25 percent of India's tanning activity is undertaken in Kolkata and its suburbs. The state's share of total industrial output in India was 9.8% in 1980–81, declining to 5% by 1997–98. However, the service sector has grown at a rate higher than the national rate.
Infrastructure
Power and energy As of end of May 2016, according to data released by Central Electricity Authority on its site cea.nic.in, the installed power capacity of the state is 9984.4 MW, compared to 303.083 GW of the country. Of the total installed power capacity, 8523.83 MW was contributed by thermal power, 1,328.3 MW was contributed by hydro power and renewable power together.West Bengal government's ministry of power, in its report, enumerates individual power generating stations in West Bengal along with their respective locations and generating capacities while mentioning the total installed capacity as 13826 MW as of March 2015. As of end of April 2016, 37449 out of 37463 villages, i.e. 99.96? of inhabited villages in West Bengal were cumulatively electrified.
Communication and transportation As of 2011, West Bengal has a total road length of 92,023 kilometres (57,180 mi), with a road density of 1.04 km per km2. Of this, national highways constitute 2,578 kilometres (1,602 mi) and state highways 2,393 kilometres (1,487 mi). As of June 2015, the central government mulled augmenting the state's national highways' length by another couple of thousand kilometres in a bid to supplement to India's plan of seamless BBIN connectivity through Nepal,Bhutan,India and Bangladesh, subject to availability of land,by investing in the tunes of US$4–5 billion.
Railways The Eastern railways zone, southeastern railways zone and N.F railway zone of Indian Railways run operations in West Bengal. At the end of 2014-15, the route length in West Bengal was 4070 km of which around 4000 km has been converted to broad gauge and around 2500 km has been electrified, the running track length was 7122 km and the total track length was 10,466 km, with the number of stations exceeding 800. Kolkata Metro railway is the newest zone of the IR with a single operational link of 27 km route length, 17 km of which runs underground. As of 2016, various other metro links of approximately 120 km route length are underway in different phases of construction in Kolkata.
Ports Kolkata is a major river-port in eastern India. The Kolkata Port Trust manages both the Kolkata docks and the Haldia docks. There is passenger service to Port Blair on the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and cargo ship service to ports in India and abroad, operated by the Shipping Corporation of India. Kolkata Port handled 50.195 million tonnes (mt) of traffic in 2015-16, around 8.43% higher vis-a-vis that handled during previous fiscal. Kolkata Dock System, the first major dock formally commissioned in 1870, handled cargo traffic of 16.688 mt in 2015-16, registering a significant growth of 9.2% over the previous year. Haldia Dock Complex,the 1st green port of the country in 2015, handled 33.507 mt in 2015-16, recording growth of 8.05% over the last year. In container traffic also, KoPT recorded 6,62,891 TEUs in 2015-16, clocking upwards of 5% growth over last year, and retained its 3 rd rank amongst major container handling Ports in the country. KDS also achieved the highest ever container throughput of 5,77,749 TEUs in 2015-16, a significant growth of 9.39% over the last year.[19] Kolkata Dock System handled a traffic of 12.540 million tonnes in 2010–2011 as against 13.045 million tonnes in 2009–2010. At Haldia Dock Complex, 35.005 million tonnes of traffic was handled in 2010–2011 as against 33.378 million tonnes in 2009–2010 implying an increase of 4.87%.
Inland waterways The 560 km long Haldia- Farakka stretch in West Bengal is part of the stretch of Ganges between Haldia and Allahabad declared as the National Waterway (NW1). Also a 91 km long stretch of the NW5 is within West Bengal. West Bengal government has sought to build infrastructure to begin sustained fuel efficient cost efficient and eco-friendly shipping operations for cargo transportation and tourism, passenger traffic as well along 12 rivers in West Bengal which can reduce congestion on roads. These rivers that has been identified for national waterways services, are the Allahabad-Haldia stretch of the Ganga Bhagirathi Hooghly river, Ajoy river (96 km), Bakreswar Mayurakshi river (110 km), Damodar river (135 km), DVC canal(130 km), Dwarekeswar river (113 km), Icchamoti river (634 km), Jalangi river (131 km), Rupnarayan river (72 km), Subarnarekha river (314 km) and Sunderban Waterways (201 km).
Telecommunications As of end of April 2016, as per statistics published in press release of TRAI, there were 74.58 million wire-less (mobile phone) subscriptions(including 25.04 million with 90.43? VLR or active connections in Kolkata service area and 49.54 million with 93.69% VLR or active connections in rest of west Bengal service area) compared to over 1034.25 million wire-less connections in the whole country with VLR or active connections of 90.31% and 1.275 million wire-line subscriptions(including 0.909million in Kolkata and 0.365 million in rest of West Bengal) in West Bengal (with a total state-level tele-density of -----% as of 30 April 2016) compared to over 25.036 million wire-line connections in the whole country (with nationwide total tele-density of 83.32%) while as of April end,2016 the number of broadband subscriptions in the state were arbitrarily estimated to be around 11 million compared to that of whole of India with over 151.09 million broadband connections. VSNL has its international gateway and earth station in Kolkata. International connectivity is provided through VSNL and five STPI( Software Technology Parks of India) earth stations in Kolkata, Durgapur, Kharagpur, Haldia and siliguri. Digha has been selected as the cable landing station for the submarine cable laying project connecting India and South East Asia. BSNL has an optical fiber network of 15000 km route in West Bengal. Reliance group's Jio Infocomm has laid 4500 km of optical fiber network in the state for its 4G network.[23] Under National Optic Fibre Network (NOFN) mission, optical fibre cable will be laid in 341 blocks covering most of the gram panchayats in West Bengal.
Aviation Spread over 2640 acres at Dumdum in Kolkata, the largest in eastern India, the newly modernised Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport is the fifth busiest international airport in India in respect of aircraft movement (after Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai). It has two asphalt runways, the primary one extended by 700 meters (3627×50m) and upgraded to CATIIIB, and the secondary one (2790×46m) upgraded to CATII ILS standards. Its terminal is a new and sprawling L-shaped six-level integrated terminal of over 2,510,000 sq ft inaugurated in 2013, able to handle 25 million passengers per annum. It includes check-in counters that use CUTE (Common User Terminal Equipment) technology, 78 immigration counters, 12 customs counters, passenger lounges provided by Air India and Jet Airways, 18 aerobridges, 57 remote parking bays, 2 underground two-leveled carparks and car parking facilities in landscaped area capable of handling 5000 cars. The airport has a Centre for Perishable Commodities(CPC), two luxury hotels and a shopping mall.Between the 1940s and 1960s, major airlines such as Aeroflot, Air France, Alitalia, Cathay Pacific, Japan Airlines, Philippine Airlines, KLM, Pan Am, Lufthansa, Swissair and SAS operated from the airport.
With the advent of longer haul aircraft and the socio-economio-political degeneration of the state during the 1960s, several airlines gradually discontinued operations there. The withdrawal of Lufthansa's service to Frankfurt in 2012 left Kolkata with no direct flights beyond Asia. Kolkata airport is to undergo the execution of Phase 2 of the expansion plan which primarily involves the construction of an 86-meter ATC Tower. Additionally, the current Kolkata Metro expansion plans include two new lines to the airport for better connectivity.
Bagdogra airport near Siliguri is another significant airport in the state. Kazi Nazrul Islam Airport, country's first private greenfield aerotropolis project spread over 650 acres, under Bengal Aerotropolis Projects Limited (BAPL) co-owned by Singapore-based Changi group, conceived in 2006-07 to be a domestic/international airport with handling capacity of 1 million per annum that can be expanded to 2.5 million per annum in future, officially commenced operations in 2015 at Andal, 185 km away from the state capital Kolkata. As of June 2016, the fledgling project is still suffering from birth pangs as it strives to attract airliners,grappling with dire paucity of adequate number of fliers necessary to sustain flying operations from here,in the investment starved ambience prevailing in its immediate hinterland. As of 2011, the state has 22 formally approved special economic zones (SEZ). Of these, 17 are related to information technology (IT) or IT,enabled services (ITES).
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