Meeting with Sovan Chatterjee, Mayor of Kolkata, along with other members of Kolkata’s Council.
As our Indo-Canada Chamber of Commerce Trade Mission pressed ahead, we held meetings with government and business leaders from the City of Kolkata. I was honoured to meet with Sovan Chatterjee, Mayor of Kolkata, along with other members of Kolkata’s Council, including Mayor-in-Council Debasish Kumar. As municipal leaders, we discussed how cities are well positioned to help local businesses grow, expand and compete globally, and to help attract new investors.
Kolkata and Mississauga have similar industry clusters including information and communications technology (ICT) and food and beverage (FB) manufacturing. As part of the Kitchener-Waterloo-Toronto ICT corridor, Mississauga is at the heart of North America’s largest ICT cluster. Our F&B manufacturing is the number one manufacturing employer in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and Mississauga’s F&B sector is growing at a significantly faster rate than the rest of the surrounding GTA. Today, over 80 F&B head offices choose to operate in Mississauga.
Our working day also included an opportunity to deliver another keynote address, and to lead a discussion about new trade perspective opportunities, at an event hosted by the Bharat Chamber of Commerce – one of India’s oldest Chambers of Commerce. In attendance was Arjun Kumar Dutta, Trade Commissioner with the Government of Canada, and an important policy advisor on issues that include the food industry.
During my remarks I discussed how local economic development offices, boards of trade, and chambers of commerce play an important role to help international businesses understand domestic rules and regulations, and to learn about government incentive programs.
Whether it’s the team of committed professionals from the City of Mississauga’s Economic Development Office (EDO) or the Bharat Chamber of Commerce, both are proof that Mississauga and Kolkata are open for business.