Tuesday, October 22, 2013: The state of Karnataka is all geared up to have a new IT policy in place, which will focus on attracting more investment in the state. According to a Business Standard report, the policy will lay special emphasis on raising investors’ interest in the tier-II and tier-III cities. The new policy is set to be unveiled today at the flagship annual IT event. It will also aim at increasing the employment opportunities in the state.
According to the state government, the new IT policy would facilitate employment of around 2 million people directly in Karnataka by 2020. The figure is just 900,000 as of now. The new policy will also aim to increase the exports from the existing Rs 16,50,000 to Rs 40,000,000 by 2020. The report quoted Srivatsa Krishna, secretary, Department of IT, BT and S&T, Karnatakam saying that the new IT policy will help the state to become the “largest IT cluster on the globe” and “world leader overtaking Silicon Valley”.
Commenting on the development, S R Patil, minister for IT, biotechnology, science and technology, planning and statistics in the Government of Karnataka, said, “We are bringing a radical change in our IT policy, making it more investor-friendly. The ITE.Biz event will be more meaningful this time because we are all set to announce several incentives and exemptions to the IT industry, especially for the start-ups. These incentives also include helping the tier-II and III towns attract investments.”
The new policy will also attract investments in the allied sectors including electronics hardware manufacturing. It is worth mentioning here that the government of India is also having an increased focus on electronics manufacturing, particularly because the import of electronics has increased so much that it is going to be $280 billion by 2020, higher than the estimated oil import bill of around $200 billion.
