Friday, March 21, 2008

Centre Planning IT Investment Regions

Hyderabad: The Central Government is charting out a policy for the creation of IT investment regions under the public private partnership (PPP) model to be driven by the State Governments and supported by the Centre.

Typically, such IT investment regions would be spread across several sq km and host special economic zones and related infrastructure and help attract more investments, according to the Union Secretary for Information Technology and Communication, Jainder Singh.

The objective of the centres is to provide better infrastructure and thereby de-congest rapidly growing major cities in the country, Singh said at the inaugural session of the Hyderabad IT Summit.

The objective of these IT investment regions, to be anchored by State Governments, would be to enable IT companies expand their operations and also scale up to the next level of technology outsourcing business, he said.

IT exports

Referring to the Indian IT exports, Singh said that the exports are poised to touch $40 billion during 2007-2008 as against $31 billion in 2006-2007, and now contributes to about 5.4 per cent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and 25 per cent of country total exports.

The Chairman of FICCI IT, Ashank Desai, said that there is immense untapped potential for outsourcing and India barely addresses about a 10th of the overall market. While IT contributes to about 5 per cent of GDP, this could go up to about 15 per cent by 2010.

Outlining some of the corporate social responsibility initiatives of the company, the Chairman of Satyam Computer, B. Ramalinga Raju, said that the Indian IT industry is at an inflection point and has the potential to become a $1- trillion business employing more than 100 million people.

The Chairman of Electronics ad Computer Software Export promotion Council (ESC), Sanjiv Narayan, said in spite challenges such as rupee concerns, wage inflation and attrition, the IT sector has managed a significant growth this year.

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