kolkata india is a conglomeration of states and its strength rests in cooperative federalism especially in matters relating to economic development president pranab mukherjee said while inaugurating the bengal global business summit in kolkata on friday there is no contradiction between development of a constituent state and development of a whole the president said drawing attention to the absence of union finance minister arun jaitley and his collea gues from the summitthe absence of the central ministers was all the more conspicuous when compared to their participation last year arun jaitley nitin gadkari piyush goyal and suresh prabhu had all attended the summitthe ties between mamata banerjee and pm narendra modi hadnt gone this downhill then in the 2016 summit the centre had committed rs 37482 crore for national highways and another rs 956674 crore to rev up the states inland waterways the president had a pat for the cm on friday as a former union fi nance minister i am aware how debtstressed the state was it had a legacy baggagethey have revived it there is a revenue buoyancy there is an appropriate investment climate the economy of the state suffered on account of the partition of india however there has been significant progress in last six yearsgrowth in state gdp has been impressive but significantly the state has also struck a fine balance between growth and the lower end of the social ladder mukherjee saidhe added that the largescale participation in the fo scale participation in the forum with representatives from 29 countries shows the level of interest in bengal amongst investors he complemented the state for its focus on infrastructure and adoption of investmentfriendly policies he cited skilled manpower and a stable political regime as the key drivers for the good response from investorsciting an example of the chief ministers project to provide free bicycles to schoolgoers statewide he said this could revive the golden days of bengal being a leading bicycle manufacturer in the country urging the participants to invest in her state mamata said the economy of bengal has moved up from 67 billion to 140 billion within five ye ars our tax revenues have doubled in four years which is a record in india our capital expenditure has grown more than sevenfold in the short period our growth in the industrial sector has been 1059 compared to the national average of 73 in 201516in the service sector we grew oneandahalftimes faster than the national average and in agricultural sector five times the national averagetaking a dig at prime minister modi who inaugurated the vibrant gujarat summit on january 10 mamata said you will be happy to know that in social sectors too we are doing very good work when we came to power the states infant mortality rate was 32 within five years this has come down to 26 even in gujarat the infant mortality rate is 33 while the national average is 37