Govt to develop special regions to promote IT industry

Government has decided to set up Information Technology Investment Region through the Public Private Partnership mode across the country, as part of its initiatives to give boost to the IT industry, a top official said today.     

"These regions would be a combination of IT-ITes and Electronics Hardware Manufacturing Units, residential area, SEZ and industrial parks," IT Department Secretary Jatinder Singh told reporters here .     

He also said the five southern states have already shown interest in developing IT Investment Region (ITIR).    

"This new concept is expected to delineate investment region with maximum area of 4,000 hectares and the development of the area of ITIR would be taken up in two phases," Singh said, adding "20 per cent of it would be developed in the first phase and the rest afterwards."     

Dwelling upon the role of the Union and State governments in this initiative, he said Centre would ensure availability of external infrastructure linkages such as national highway, airports and rails to ITIR in time bound manner, while the state governments would identify the area for developing new townships and ensure basic infrastructure. 
    
"This new initiative will set a new trend and create opportunities for employment in these new emerging locations," he added.