Pasta, pizza and dollops of pizzazz were part of a spread that chief minister Mamata Banerjee was served up in Milan as she set about trying to persuade Italian fat cats to bite into business opportunities in Bengal that fleetingly stayed at the top of the ranking chart of states in terms of ease of doing business.

Speaking at the business meeting organised by the Bengal government in Milan, Mamata reminded the audience how Bengalis love eating Italian food and watching their football.

“We love your pasta and pizza. We love your football…. You invest your money in Bengal…. India is your sweet home,” Mamata said, her 18-minute speech garnished with broken Italian.

Like many of her addresses, the chief minister relied strongly on her passionate appeal rather than digging into minute details that potential investors, especially small and medium enterprises, usually like to know before taking a business call.

She reminded the audience of several social schemes that her government has introduced to empower the grassroots sector, which can potentially become major buyers of goods and services that industry has to offer.

Mamata also pointed out that skilled and cheap manpower that Bengal has to offer and Italian technology in various fields such as leather, fashion design, agro processing, jewellery, steel and mining among others could find synergy.

Speaking before her, Damiano Francovigh, the consul-general of Italy to Calcutta, set the tone of the afternoon by extolling the benefits of investing in Bengal, such as it is a hub of leather export, higher than national average growth rate and improved physical infrastructure.

However, as a mature diplomat, he added: “I’m not saying Bengal is a paradise. But come and have a look.”

Representatives of two Italian chambers from Lombardy, where Milan is located, and Naples spoke after Francovigh. Alessandra Spada, vicepresident of Assolombarda Confindustria, Milano, said Bengal can be looked at as a hub not only for eastern India but a gateway to the entire Southeast Asia.

Gianluigi Traettino, the president of Confindustria Casterta from Naples, confirmed he would participate in the next round of Bengal Global Business Summit in February 2019 with a strong delegation.

However, little reassures potential investors more than a real success story.

Asked to share his experience working in Bengal, Cosimo Franco, CEO of Endura, a Bologna-headquartered chemical manufacturing company, said it had been a great journey so far after setting up business seven years ago and he is also looking to expand capacity in his plant near Singur.

But he had a different take on why Italian business may look at Bengal and India.

“India, for sure, is a complex country but Italy is also complex, and that’s why we’re on same wavelength and we can do business. Also allow me to say, Indians as well as Italians sometime specialise in complicating easy things,” Franco said amid mild laughter among Italian representatives.