70,00,000 jobs to be created in IT sector

NEW DELHI: While presenting the Union Budget 2005-06 in the Parliament, Finance Minister P Chidambaram outlined the government's efforts to give a major boost to local manufacturing and increase India's potential as a manufacturing hub not only for the region but also for the world. He also mentioned that the Information Technology sector would generate 70 lakh (7 million) jobs by the year 2009.

Main highlights from the budget proceedings:

• Proposal to set up a manufacturing competitiveness council that will look towards implementing the manufacturing competitiveness scheme on a national scale.



• Seventy lakh additional jobs to be created in the IT sector



• Rs 12,000 crore allocated for the USO fund for year 2005-06 and the government proposes to connect 1687 sub-divisions with the help of BSNL



• 5.2 lakh VPTs have already been provided by BSNL to the village population. The government is proposing to connect 66,822 villages to the national mainstream and BSNL will take VPTs to these villages in the year 2005-06.



• While, IT software will be exempted from CVT, the government is going to put four percent countervailing duty on imports for IT inputs. In addition to this, the government has identified about 270 electronic components and items on which the duty will be reduced to nil.