Budge Budge owes much of its importance to the port, oil storage and jute mills. Being close to Kolkata and on the shores of the Hooghly River makes it a strategic location for oil storage and is the biggest oil storage for the metropolis Calcutta with big PSUs like Petroleum Wharves Budge Budge under Kolkata Port Trust. BPCL, HPCL, IOC having large units there. Jute mills were the biggest employers in the area till they started falling sick. Prominent among them are New Central Jute Mill and Budge Budge Jute Mills. At their height before 1971 these jute mills used to employ thousands of workers (New Central Jute Mills has been said to have employed as many as twenty thousand people) but after the partition of India and the subsequent creation of Bangladesh, supply of raw materials for these jute mills decreased. This, along with failure of trade unions lead to the closing of most of these jute mills.