Hyderabad, Feb 28 :Telangana Minister for IT and Industries, K T Rama Rao (KTR) on Sunday claimed that the IT industry in Hyderabad has faced minimum disruption in conducting its activities despite ongoing pandemic had a severe impact on several sectors across the globe.
This could be achieved by a proactive partnership between the state government and the industry, Mr KTR said in his letter addressed to Union Minister for Information Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad.
The IT Minister while sharing some very promising news from Telangana amidst all the gloomy news coming in from across the globe owing to the Covid pandemic, said that the latest estimates indicated that the IT exports from Telangana are expected to grow over 7 per cent to touch Rs 1.4 lakh crore (about $19.1 billion) for the financial year 2020-21 against the estimated national growth rate of about 1.9 percent at $150 billion as per NASSCOM report.
Hyderabad saw a healthy 8.7 million square feet of new office space creation during the year, despite the severe impact of Covid19 on the economy, he said in terms of the share of sectorial occupiers, the information technology (IT/ITeS) sector including data centres dominated with a major share, followed by Banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) and manufacturing sectors, while other services and co-working sectors also contributed.
In his letter, he reminded that on behalf of the Telangana State Government, numerous appeals were made during the past six years to sanction funds for the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) in Hyderabad City.
Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao had also appealed to Prime Minister Sri Narendra Mod on multiple occasions, both personally and through official letters to provide assistance to ITIR project, but unfortunately there was no response whatsoever from the Union Government on this important initiative, he pointed out.
Valuable time was lost as the Telangana Government kept on pursuing the ITIR Project without any response from the Union Government, the Minister said .
Considering the importance of the IT sector and its contribution to the overall economy, a prompt response on such an important matter would have been appropriate, he said that lakhs of local youth have been deprived of employment due to the lackadaisical attitude of the Union Government.
Since it is now ‘amply clear’ that the Union Government is ‘ not inclined to continue the ITIR scheme’, Mr KTR requested the Union Minister to consider providing a scheme/initiative in its place to ensure that cities like Hyderabad continue to flourish and provide employment to our youngsters.
Cities like Hyderabad are the economic engines that contribute immensely to our country’s economy, he said it is therefore important that such cities should be rewarded by way of new policy initiatives and incentives.
The youth of Telangana are eagerly waiting for new employment opportunities that could be created with the support of the Union Government in the IT Sector, said Mr KTR. (UNI)