Kolkata 3rd major IT destination by 2010: Buddhadeb

Kolkata, Aug 4 (UNI) West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee has asserted that Kolkata is poised to be the third most sought after BPO destination in the world by 2010.

While inaugurating an IT park, 'Millenium City', here yesterday, the chief minister claimed that the state's growth rate in IT industry was much higher than the national average.

''The extremely talented human resource and labour cost advantage provided by Bengal was instrumental in ensuring the unprecedented growth of this industry in the past few years,'' Mr Bhattacharjee elaborated.

He further claimed that about 15,000 youths in the state had availed of employment opportunities in the state's IT sector this year.

''Bengal as a whole is benefitting enormously from this boom in the economy. Durgapur now has more than 1,000, Siliguri more than 200 and Kalyani has more than 100 IT professionals,'' Mr Bhattacharjee said.

He stated that while Indian economy was growing at as high as 8-9 per cent, the new employment opportunities created had decreased by almost four per cent in the last fiscal.

Therefore, it was imperative to create more jobs so that the benefits of economic growth could be realised in all quarters of the society.

''While Hyderabad and Bangalore had been very successful in laying the foundation of IT way back in the 1980s, Bengal was lagging behind so far. However, the scenario has changed, with IT majors, including IBM, Siemens, Alstom and Lufthansa choosing Kolkata as their favoured destination,'' the chief minister said.

State IT Minister Debesh Das also informed the mediapersons that while the IT market across the world is estimated at 100 billion dollars, India has managed to attract investment of a mere 0.2 billion dollars. However, India has set a target of attracting investment of upto seven billion dollars by 2010, he added.

UNI