Hyderabad: IT and industries Minister K.T. Rama Rao on Satur-day told the Assembly that Hyderabad would soon overtake Bangalore in the IT sector.
While replying to queries by Congress members Mallu Bhatti Vikram-arka and D. Sridhar Babu during the question hour of the house, the minister explained that the IT industry is rapidly growing in Hyderabad and the city has surpassed Bengaluru in office space occupation.
“Yesterday, I had said that Hyderabad would overtake Bengaluru in office space absorption this year. According to the latest updates, Hyderabad has already beaten Bengaluru in the first quarter,” the minister explained.
The Congress members said that if the state government would have put more pressure on the centre, more employment could be generated through the Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) project.
Tearing into the Congress claims of establishing the ITIR project in the city during the UPA reign, the minister said that the UPA government had confined itself only to making an announcement of the project.
He explained: “The project was announced in Nov-ember 2013 with investment support of Rs 3,275 cr-ore but not a single paisa was released. The state government had aggressively pursued the issue with the Centre.
Finally, the NDA government shelved the ITIR policy, which was announced in June 2018. However, without waiting for New Delhi’s support, the state government continued with its efforts to create new IT clusters and attract new investments in the sector.
He said that though we have a growth rate of 17 per cent in the IT Sector, the number of employees working in the IT sector has reached 5.5 lakhs. Only 3 lakh employees were in the Hyderabad IT sector during the combined state of AP. About 12.67 lakh jobs have been created through TSIPAS in other sectors, including IT.
One may note here that reports say that in Benga-luru there are around 1.5 million employees in the IT sector.
