Andhra to be power surplus by '08

YSR promises all help to IT industry.

Assuring the IT sector in particular and industry in general of providing all the needful infrastructure for their hassle-free growth, chief minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy today said the state would be power surplus by next year and the government was bent upon keeping the industrial tariffs at reasonably low levels.

Speaking at the inaugural sessions of the sixth edition of GITEX (Gulf Information Technology Exhibition) India-2007 and the sixth edition of the two-day India Soft-2007 here on Tuesday, the chief minister said his government was making all efforts to tap the enormous potential for the growth of the IT and the service sector.

"The efforts made so far in this respect are substantial. Yet, much more needs to be done from the government's end," he said.

Stating that the existing gap between what the industry requires and what the students are taught in professional colleges was leading to non-absorption of close to 70,000 students, who pass out from engineering colleges each year, into companies, the chief minister said the government's efforts through the establishment of Jawahar Knowledge Centres (JKCs) were yielding results in bridging this gap. According to him, the strike rate among the engineering students has increased to 22 per cent from just 8 per cent in the past and efforts are underway to increase this rate to 80 per cent in the days to come.

Referring to the ongoing power supply issues, the chief minister said the state would emerge as a power surplus state from June 2008 when additional natural gas from Reliance wells in the KG Basin starts flowing. "The government would also take care of the cost of power when it comes to industrial tariff," he said. The government was planning to spend Rs 1,150 crore for additional power purchases to meet the state's demand.

Speaking on the occasion, Jainder Singh, secretary, Department of Information Technology, Government of India, said new IT townships and other related infrastructure was the need of the hour for the growth of the IT industry.

"We need at least 50 cyber towns, which will also address the problem of traffic congestion and ease the burden on the existing cities," he said while lauding the state government efforts on this front.

Stating that substantial scarcity for manpower for the IT sector was in store in the near future, Singh said the JKC model had already come in handy to address the problem, which is also being studied by other states.

Nalin Kohli, chairman, Electronics and Computer Software Export Council (ESC) said over 90 exhibitors and 150 delegates from about 40 countries were taking part in the India Soft event, which is targeted to provide business exposure to Indian SMEs operating in these sectors.

Besides presenting the awards to the top performers in the IT, ITeS and electronic hardware sectors from the state at the inaugural session, the representatives of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California State University and the Institute for Electronic Governance (IEG) of the state government exchanged the MoU for jointly collaborating on implementing the open source platform, under the Open Knowledge Initiative.