The Hindu : Front Page : VS invites IT majors to invest in Kerala

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Oct 15, 2007
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VS invites IT majors to invest in Kerala

Special Correspondent

Says the State has created world-class infrastructure in the sector

Photo: Sampath Kumar

Sales pitch: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan at a press meet before launching an IT road show in Bangalore on Sunday. —

Bangalore: Chief Minister V.S. Achuthanandan on Sunday invited information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services majors to invest in Kerala, which had created a world-class infrastructure, an industry-friendly climate and free from labour unrest.

Addressing presspersons before launching the first-ever road show here and meeting with the representatives of the IT majors, Mr. Achuthanandan said that the IT captains such as Infosys Chief Mentor N.R. Narayana Murthy, who had visited the Technopark and Infopark in his State, were impressed by the infrastructure and clean-green atmosphere there.

Mr. Achuthanandan, who visited the Infosys Technologies campus at Electronics City, said that the corporate houses were happy with the progressive policies and low operational costs and were eager to shift their expansion programmes to Kerala. He said that investments to the tune of about Rs. 6,000 crore had been made in these two parks and another Rs. 6,000 crore in Technocity and other areas was in the offing. An apex company had been created and project-specific special purpose vehicles would handle the new IT projects. There will be a uniform spread of IT development in all the districts, he said.

A 507-acre IT township — Technocity — would come up in Thiruvananthapuram and work on the Smart City project at Kochi would commence by the end of October.

Apart from this, IT parks were coming up in all the districts. He said that the State had the best IT/ITES trained manpower, 75 per cent savings on start-up and operational costs and a strong data backbone. Kerala IT Secretary K.R. Jyothilal said his State had learnt lessons from Karnataka’s problems in handling the IT industry and that the IT majors would not find any problems in investing there.

He said the State had entered into collaboration with Infosys for starting finishing schools for the weaker sections. Shashi Tharoor, the former Under Secretary of the United Nations, was also helping the State in establishing more finishing schools, he said.

The Chief Minister said that financial incentives up to 40 per cent based on fixed capital investment; creation of technology development fund for research and development projects; industrial power tariffs to IT units/parks; IT infrastructural providers and Akshaya e-centres; floor area ratio for IT industry up to five; exemption of stamp duty, registration fee and entry tax would be extended to them.

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