Visakhapatnam: Union IT and telecommunications minister Ravishankar Prasad has said that the Centre was considering sanctioning one more Electronics Manufacturing Cluster (EMC) to AP in addition to four such clusters that were approved earlier in principle.
He also announced, Na-tional Informatics Centre (NIC) for AP, India Post’s e-commerce cent-re at Guntur and parcel hubs at Vizag, Vijayawada and Tirupati.
Around 1,258 post off-ices in AP will be digitised by March 2017, he added.
A separate telephone exchange is also being sanctioned for new capital city Amaravati.
He laid the foundation stone for a high-end research lab of Society for Appl-ied Microwave Electro-nics Engineering and Research (SAMEER) in the presence of Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu.
A MoU was also signed in his presence for an incubation centre being jointly developed by Vuda and STPI.
Mr Prasad said India has huge scope for electronic manufacturing and at present the country has 100 crores mobile phones. Mr Prasad add-ed that India can now manufacture 10 crores of mobile phone handsets and AP is playing a major role in it, with a world class manufacturing facility at Sri City.
He was also appreciative about AP Chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu’s, idea of using el-ectric poles to connect optic fibres to every hou-sehold. “I will ask my officials to interact with Mr Naidu’s team, on the innovative idea of using electric poles as part of digital India. The idea can be explored and exp-erimented in other sta-tes,” he said and added that at present India has 40 crore Internet users and the number is set to go up by 50 crore by 2017.
Mr Prasad said the Union government is revising the ITIR policy and as and when the new policy is finalised, it will positively consider the state government’s proposal on ITIR.
The Union IT minister also positively responded to Vizag MP Kambhampati Haribabu’s request for a cloud computing centre for Vizag start-ups. He also said that Mr Venkaiah Nai-du was the best representative of AP at Delhi.
Speaking on the occasion, Mr Venkaiah Na-idu said he was looking at bringing a new project whenever he visits AP.Mr Naidu asked the Union IT minister to im-mediately sanction long-pending ITIR project and also other electronic manufacturing facilities as AP is ready to emerge as knowledge economy.
He added that by 2020, India is expected to imp-ort $300 billion electronic goods, of which AP was ready to manufactu-re 50 per cent, if the Cen-tre supports the state.
New Railway zone to AP soon: Venkaiah
Union minister for urb-an development, M. Venkaiah Naidu said AP will soon get a new railway zone and claimed that the BJP-led Union government was giving top priority to AP towards sanctioning of new projects, schemes and funds.
Mr Venkaiah Naidu and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu lau-nched '450 crore worth development works and started the Swachch Chilakaluripeta progra-mme at Chilakaluripeta on Thursday.
Mr. Venkaiah Naidu asked the public to forget the state bifurcation issue and work for development of AP. He read out the funds and projects sanctioned to AP after bifurcation.
Mr Venkaiah Naidu claimed that as a native Telugu person, he was working for the development of AP by bringing projects, schemes and funds from Union government. He said '500 crore funds would be sanctioned to Guntur for the underground draina-ge scheme by the union government.
Mr. Venkaiah Naidu said AP will soon get new railway zone and Vijayawada airport will be developed as international airport.
He claimed that the Union government dev-eloped Visakhapatnam airport into international airport giving global connectivity. He added that Mr Modi and Mr Chandrababu Naidu is the best ‘development pair’ and added that the BJP government resol-ved power cut issue by allotting surplus power of northern states to AP.
He added that AP will develop with the help of round-the-clock power and development of roads with the sanction of rs 65,000 crore funds. The Union minister all-eged that some forces were trying to tarnish the image of Mr Modi and India by provoking violence.
