Mega projects mooted for Visakhapatnam in IT sector have not seen much progress except for the Millennium Tower, which will be fully operational by December 2017.
A variety of reasons are attributed for the failure to ground the projects. For instance, the proposed iconic tower at Visakhapatnam Special Economic Zone, Duvvada, for which Union Minister of State for Commerce Nirmala Sitharaman laid the foundation stone two and half years ago, is yet to see any civil work getting launched for want of release of funds from the Centre.
On the other hand, the differences between VUDA and STPI over launching of work on a skyscraper at Siripuram have been thrashed out with the Centre agreeing to permit the former to construct it.
The tower near VUDA office will provide plug and play facility in domain-specific areas of marine, defence, petroleum, IT apps, underwater pipelines, warfare and unmanned vehicles. The tower at Duvvada was supposed to become a huge data recovery centre for big companies across the world in the event of an emergency.
Signature Tower touted to be built on the lines of Cyber Towers of Hyderabad to put Visakhapatnam on international IT map has remained a non-starter despite allotment of 17.98 acres near Sunrise Incubation Hub on Hill No. 3 of Rushikonda and appointment of American consultant Long La Salle.
With no response to expression of interest sought through global tenders, now the State government wants to re-float the tenders after changing the design of the tower with a built-up space of one million sft at the sea-facing Madhurawada IT SEZ. “Work on Millennium Tower is going on at brisk pace. The work on three blocks with three lakh sft will be completed by December 2017,” AP Electronics and IT Agency CEO Srinivasa Moorthy said.
