Andhra Pradesh readies roadmap for ‘Silicon Corridor of India’

Hyderabad: AP government officially unveiled its Information Technology Policy on Monday. The IT region of the state has been named ‘Silicon Corridor’ of India.

According to the policy, Visakhapatnam will have an IT township with a built-up space of five million square feet. A signature tower of one million square feet will form the nucleus of the mega IT Hub in Vizag.

The policy order, signed by Sanjay Jaju, the IT secretary of AP government, proposed ITIRs (IT Investment Region) to be initially developed in Visakhapatnam and Tirupati. The Tirupati-Anantapur corridor will be done at a later phase. The policy will be in force from 2014 to 2020.

According to the IT department, the policy is aimed to attract investments of two billion US dollars in IT and five billion US dollars in electronics manufacture. Also, a five per cent share in national exports of software is aimed apart from generating additional employment of five lakh in the next five years.

The state has also made drastic amendments to computer education. Universities will be advised to give credits to the students successfully completing notified online courses, says the IT policy.
Students of software engineering, electronics and computer sciences shall undergo a mandatory internship in the 4th year of the course in association with the industry.

The state will also support opening of premier IT institutes in partnership with the top IT companies and foreign universities.

“IT Towers, IT Parks and IT Zones shall be developed through PPP model. For each project, APIIC shall select a partner, who can be a developer or a consortium of developers and the industry players, through a bidding process involving quality and cost based selection method,” the order says.

It also says that the state government will be providing various relaxations from the zoning regulations, land usage conversions and AP Building Rules to the industries.