BHUBANESWAR, September 22: The Odisha government will spend over Rs 4,000 crore on the IT and IT-enabled services sector in next 5 years to create more than one lakh jobs, Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik said today.
"The IT sector has been at the top of our agenda. The state government is going to spend around Rs 4,000 crore from its budget in next five years towards IT, ITES and ESDM (Electronic Systems Design and Manufacturing)," Patnaik said while inaugurating MindTree Kalinga facility here.
Noting that his government has brought a new industry friendly ICT Policy 2014 and Industrial Policy Resolution -2015, the Chief Minister said the effort is to make Odisha the preferred IT destination for IT/ITES/ESDM companies by providing a slew of attractive fiscal incentives and concessions.
"In fact, we target to create one lakh jobs in IT sector in the next five years. It is a matter of pride that growth rate of IT exports from the state is more than the national growth rate for last many years. Bhubaneswar has equally made good progress in IT SEZ sector too," he said.
As Odisha has been at the forefront of IT revolution, the government has decided that every department would spend two percent of plan budget or one per cent of total budget for electronic enabled service delivery to citizens as enacted under Right to Public Service Delivery Act, Patnaik said.
The state government is also setting up a Green Field Electronics Manufacturing Cluster within Infovalley.
It is the first state in the country which has signed an MOU with TiE, Silicon Valley, USA to attract foreign investment under ESDM sector, the Chief Minister said.
