Chief Minister of Tamilnadu announces new ITES policy

[Harold F. Schiffman]

>>From the Hindu,
http://www.thehindu.com/2005/09/09/stories/2005090907630100.htm
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Chief Minister releases new ITES policy

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"We are probably the only State that has taken the unique initiative of
developing a specialised ITES curriculum"
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CHENNAI: Chief Minister Jayalalithaa on Thursday released the new
Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) policy and announced the
setting up of a second Information Technology park at Siruseri.
Inaugurating the fifth edition of CONNECT 2005, the largest IT event in
the State organised by the State Government and the Confederation of
Indian Industry (southern region) here, Ms. Jayalalithaa said: "I have
spelt out in the policy the steps that are being envisaged to add value to
the existing educational curriculum. These include a wide-ranging gamut of
activities from language and voice training to training in specialised
verticals in the ITES sphere. We are, probably, the only State that has
taken the unique initiative of developing, in partnership with the
industry, a specialised ITES curriculum. This course has been widely
adopted in several of the State's universities."

Ms. Jayalalithaa pointed to the near tripling of IT exports from the State
and said one software unit was coming every three days. The number of
software units in the State in 2004-05 was 1,266, she said, complimenting
"the spirit" of medium and small companies "striving furiously for their
niche markets." The range and depth of software exports had created the
confidence that the IT industry was on a stable platform, the Chief
Minister said. In 2004-05, application software accounted for 61 per cent
of the software exports; systems software 12 per cent; ITES (other than
Business Process Outsourcing)  10 per cent, BPO five per cent; product
development - three per cent; and other sectors - nine.

Inviting hardware manufacturers to Chennai, Ms. Jayalalithaa outlined the
qualities that made the city and State the "most preferred investment
destination" in the country. "Chennai is clearly a city on the move... I
can assure you that taken together infrastructure, talent pool,
connectivity, security and quality of living Chennai is India's best
investment destination today...  International players in the ICT hardware
sector have not only found Chennai and Tamil Nadu extremely cost
competitive but are quite excited about our strategic location on major
air and sea routes to the European and Middle Eastern markets. My
Government has taken steps to enable a new international airport to be
built together with an additional runway," she said.

Second IT park

She said since the IT park at Siruseri had run out of space, and there was
huge demand, the Government was moving ahead with establishing a second IT
park at Siruseri. In all, about 5.2 million sq. ft. of space was under
construction to house the IT industry in the city. "There are more than 40
IT parks that are coming up in the public as well as private sector." She
said work on an IT park in Coimbatore would commence shortly. ELCOT had
been allotted land for constructing the park. Ms. Jayalalithaa handed over
documents of the Knowledge Industry Township to S. Raman, co-founder, HCL
Technologies, A.L. Rao, Chief Operating Officer, Wipro and B. Ramaraju,
managing director, Satyam Computer Services.

R. ParasuRaman, chairman, CII (southern region), outlined various
public-private partnerships the organisation had with the Government and
said it was now focussing on facilitating the process of industrialising
the southern districts. B. Santhanam, chairman, CII, Tamil Nadu, said the
conference would discuss strategies to accelerate the Indian IT industry.

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