The Hindu : Kerala / Kochi News : West Bengal keen on promoting IT

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Sunday, Nov 16, 2008
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West Bengal keen on promoting IT

Staff Reporter

KOCHI: West Bengal’s earnings from IT exports have crossed $1 billion and the State hopes to have at least two lakh IT professionals by 2011, Debesh Das, the State’s Minister for Information Technology, has said.

Addressing media persons on the sidelines of the national conference on free software held at Cusat here on Saturday, Dr. Das said that the State had achieved a growth of 45 per cent in revenue earnings from IT in 2007-08 compared to the figures recorded during 2006-07.

Elaborating on the latest plans to boost IT in the State, the Minister said his department would soon come up with two IT parks worth an initial investment of Rs.50 crore each. Dr. Das said that around 1,532 acres have been identified for these parks near the Kolkata airport.

Explaining that the government has various plans to boost IT sector in the State, he said that IT parks would come up at Durgapur, Kharagpur, Kalyani, Siliguri and Haldia. He said the government would provide capital, interest and training subsidies to IT companies planning to invest in the State.

He said that the government had no particular stance on the need to have trade unions in the IT sector. “It is for the employees to decide whether they should have trade unions. It is their right to decide,” he said.

Meltdown

Referring to the impact of the global meltdown on West Bengal, the Minister said the IT sector has not been affected much even though new investments have stopped coming into the State.

Dr. Das said that the number of people being recruited in to the IT sector might go down due to the economic fallout.

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