Telangana asks Centre for funds to develop Hyderabad ITIR

Hyderabad: IT Minister KT Rama Rao on Thursday urged the Union government to reinstate Information Technology Investment Region (ITIR) in Hyderabad.

In a Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, KTR reminded that the then Union government had in 2008 designed ITIR in order to attract greater IT investments into the country. The project was initially sanctioned in 2010 for the two cities of Hyderabad and Bangalore, and later on a few other cities were added.

As per the requirements, around 49,000 acres in three clusters (both brownfield and greenfield) were identified in Hyderabad where new IT companies and IT space developers could be encouraged to set up their development centres.

The scheme had a provision for the GOI to pitch in with gap funding for the required trunk infrastructure from its existing schemes. Accordingly, a shelf of 5 projects with a total outlay of Rs 3,275 crores was identified for the Hyderabad ITIR.

The GOI accorded its approval and also agreed to support the infrastructure proposals in two phases – two projects in phase I with an outlay of Rs 165 crore and the remaining 3 projects in phase II, with an overall outlay of Rs 3,110 crore. The entire project was also given a definite timeline. The expected date of completion of phase 1 projects was 2018 and the remaining projects were proposed to come up within 20 years thereafter.

Rao regretted that regarding the first two projects approved in phase 1, correspondence was carried out with Ministries of Railways and Road Transport for sanctioning additional budgets for the projects. However, neither of the Ministries responded favourably to the proposals and the 2 projects remained non-starters. He recalled Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao writing letters to the Centre in this regard.

Rao pointed out that Telangana saw IT exports from Hyderabad rise from Rs 57,258 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 1,28,807 crore in 2019-20 – a cumulative growth of 110 per cent much much higher than national average. In the same period, the IT sector employment also grew from 3,25,000 to 5,82,126, he said.

The Minister informed that many companies of the world have chosen Hyderabad to set up their largest operations outside their own headquarters. The government is also taking several proactive steps for speedy growth of the sector.

Rao said that projects such as ITIR also provide a huge boost to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's initiatives of 'Make in India' as also 'Atmanirbhar Bharat.' The youth of Telangana will benefit immensely from the employment opportunities that will be created due to ITIR, he added.