NRN calls for speedy upgrade of infra

Expressing his displeasure with the Karnataka government’s inves-tor policies, N R Narayana Murthy, chairman emeritus, Infosys Technologies, said here on Thursday that the state government needs to create investor confidence to bring in investments. He also said, the state has to go a long way to become a thriving hub for large scale investment.

Delivering a special address at the inauguration of the Global Investors Meet 2012, the Infosys founder said, “There is a need to diversify the focus beyond IT sector and from Bangalore. We need friendly policies for sunshine sectors and it would promote diversification.”

He also said, at this point the government needs to take steps to create investor confidence which will help in development and growth. “For any industrial development to be sustainable, the industry base has to be diversif-ied. There has to be focus on promoting many growth industries like textiles, tour-ism and agro industry, which can also create job oppor-tunities.”

The knowledge-based industry sector contributed to 40 per cent of Karnataka’s exports in 2011-12. Further, expressing his views on the needs for transparency in governance, Murthy said the government must ensure a transparent policy environment for investors in which decisions are taken with speed.

The Karnataka government should focus on creating basic infrastructure and incentives for investments, and also accelerate public private partnership. He also emphasised on the need for promoting tier-2 cities and up gradation of quality of educational institutions in the state. According to various data Karna-taka is the third largest state in the country which receives Foreign Direct Investm-ent (FDI) and it has attrac-ted around 6.2 per cent of FDI in the last decade.

Further the founder of India’s second largest IT company said, to overcome the challenges of poverty sustainable jobs has to be created. Presently there are around 40 million unemployed youth in the country and to overcome the growth challenges India need to create 100 million sustainable jobs.

He also said that the government should focus more on export-oriented opportunities as it will help in reducing the trade deficit.