Vijayawada is next IT hub

Hyderabad, Feb. 1: The State government will make Vijayawada the third focused destination for information technology after Hyderabad and Visakhapatnam. The city will get an IT tower and a special economic zone park soon, the State Cabinet decided on Wednesday.
The Cabinet approved allotment of 30.6 acres of land to the information technology and communication (IT&C) department in Keesarapalli village of Gannavaram mandal, 30 km from Vijayawada, for construction of the IT towers and SEZ to attract the ICT industry and entrepreneurs, particularly NRIs from the coastal belt.
The IT towers would be a self-contained modern township comprising office space for small, medium enterprises and home-grown IT companies, incubation centre for first generation technocrat entrepreneurs, restaurants and food courts, shopping malls, health club, swimming pools and places for entertainment.
About 12 lakh squarefeet can be constructed in the area, it could create employment opportunities to 40,000 people. The incentives announced for Tier II locations under the IT&C policy 2005-2010 and the Centre’s SEZ scheme would be applicable to Vijayawada, providing host of concessions to entrepreneurs. “The IT&C department would have to pay Rs 2.25 crore to the jails department for the land,” information and energy minister Mohd Ali Shabbir said after the cabinet meeting.
Explaining Vijayawada’s importance, IT&C secretary K. Ratna Prabha told this correspondent, “Every fourth engineering professional in Silicon Valley is from India and every fourth Indian is from Andhra Pradesh. Every fourth person from AP hails from the Vijayawada region.”
Ms Prabha said that Vijayawada could be an IT hub as it was centrally located in the coastal area, five hours by road from Hyderabad and well connected by road, rail and air. It is an advanced commercial, trading and business centre, produces 2.5 lakh English speaking graduates annually, has technical infrastructure like thermal power stations, STPI, satellite earth station.