Chennai: IT parks to come up at Ramanathapuram, Cuddalore, says M Manikandan

Chennai: The State government has planned to establish IT parks at Ramanathapuram and Cuddalore districts besides a Centre of Excellence for Fin Tech at the STPI in Chennai this year, IT Minister M. Manikandan has said.

Efforts were also on to create a tech forum to promote growth in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Machine Learning and electronic hardware manufacturing to ensure more employment opportunities. An e-market portal will be developed at a cost of Rs. 30 lakh to procure IT hardware and software at a competitive price for government depart-ments.

Meanwhile, the State government has plans to tap the goodwill of the Tamil diaspora, individuals and organisations to act as ‘anchors’ to follow up and sustain the initiatives taken at the coming Global Investors Meet here in January 2019. The IT department is in discussions with The Indus Entrepreneurs, a Silicon Valley-based non-profit supporting start-ups, and individuals.

Tamil Nadu is focusing on sectors with good investment potential like textiles and apparels, pharmaceuticals & biotech, agro & food processing, aerospace & defence, automobiles & auto components, renewable energy, infrastructure, heavy engineering, chemicals and petrochemicals, electronics hardware and IT and ITES, for the GIM 2019.

The first edition of GIM was held in September 2015 in which over 6,500 delegates including about 1,600 foreign delegates attended. The government signed MoUs with 98 major investors for an investment of over '2.42 lakh crore.

While on a visit to New Delhi, recently, Industries Minister M. C. Sampath had said the State government wanted to showcase the manufacturing prowess and competitive strengths of Tamil Nadu besides several investment opportunities.