Kerala to add 100,000 IT professionals, says minister
Wednesday, 27 February 2008, 02:12 IST
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Thiruvananthapuram: Home Minister Kodiyeri Balakrishnan told Kerala's legislative assembly that the IT sector would create 100,000 new jobs in the state in the next three years. Balakrishnan was replying to questions raised in the assembly because Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan, who holds the IT portfolio, was away in Delhi. "We propose to set up IT parks in 12 districts in the state. For this we have appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers as the consulting agency to prepare a roadmap," said Balakrishnan. Currently there are IT parks in Thiruvananthapuram and Kochi. A total of 17,000 work at various IT companies in Technopark here and another 10,000 at Infopark in Kochi. "Right now we have had expressions of interest for setting up IT parks from districts like Kozhikode, Palakkad, Kannur, Kasargode, Alappuzha and Kollam. The stipulated rules that we have set out is that there should be a minimum of 50 acres of land set aside for this," the minister said. Besides the expansion of Technopark, the state government is also acquiring 204 acres to set up Technocity near Technopark. "Apart from this, we will speed up the process of land acquisition for another 303 acres for Technocity. The development of Technocity and the IT parks would be looked after by Kerala State IT Infrastructure (KSITI) Ltd, which has been formed for the creation of IT infrastructure in the state," Balakrishnan said. KSITI will have 51 percent share capital participation of the government while the rest would be raised from individuals, financial institutions, IT companies, NRIs and others.
Source: IANS
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