TN plans to take BPO centres to rural areas

The Tamil Nadu government’s Enhanced Rural Business Process Outsourcing Policy will attempt to prevent migration of youth from rural areas to cities, and shift the focus of BPO industry to rural areas.

This is an initiative to train and employ rural youth from very poor socio-economic background, said Tamil Nadu IT Minister M Manikandan.

Incentives
Each rural BPO centre will get capital subsidy of 20 per cent on capital investments, including cost of hardware and equipment, subject to a maximum of ₹5 lakh and a training subsidy of ₹2.25 lakh.

This scheme should play a key role in improving the standard of economy in rural areas, the Minister said at CII Connect 2017, the premier event on IT-ITeS sector in Tamil Nadu. All villages will be connected with high-speed optical fibre network enabling broadband connectivity. Under Tamil Net project, all urban areas will be provided optical fibre cable connectivity that can be used to provide triple play service (voice, data and video) bandwidth to e-Sevai centres, he said.

IT infra development
On creation of infrastructure for the IT sector, the Minister said State government had established eight Special Economic Zones (ELCOSEZs) for development of IT/ITES in tier-I and tier-II cities in Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai (two places), Tiruchi, Salem, Tirunelveli and Hosur.

The State government had allotted 1,322 acres of land for this purpose. Of this, 946 acres have been utilised for starting software companies in these cities.

The State government had made an investment of ₹495 crore for the establishment of ELCOSEZ. There are 68,900 direct employment and 1.37 lakh employment created, he said.

Report released
Manikandan released a KPMG-CII report on “The intelligent economy: Leveraging technology for the new era.”

As India continues to leverage new technologies to transform its industry, governance, businesses, society and economy, the report said there is a pressing need to address challenges like last mile internet connectivity, speed and broadband infrastructure; shortage of skilled manpower on new and advanced technologies; lower digital and mobile literacy rate; insufficient innovative products relevant to the need of rural India to fully leverage government’s various new technology-related initiatives, and growing threat of cyber attacks.

IT policy
Tamil Nadu IT Secretary TK Ramachandran said the State government would announce an IT policy in a ‘matter of time.’ He declined to elaborate on the policy.

Tamil Nadu is biggest beneficiary of India BPO Promotion Scheme with 4,300 seats, including including 600 seats by Amazon in Coimbatore, in one of the latest bids, said Sanjay Tyagi, director, Software Technology Park of India.

With the uptake overshooting the allocation of 3,000 seats for the State, the centre had allocated another 3,000 seats under the scheme for Tamil Nadu, he told newspersons on the sidelines of the meeting.

Source:http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/news/national/tn-plans-to-take-bpo-centres-to-rural-areas/article9945720.ece