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The second phase of expansion, which is expected to be completed by 2007, will fetch an investment of Rs 1,000 crore and create 20,000 jobs.

Thiruvananthapuram , May 9

THE State-promoted Technopark here, spread over 156 acres and home to 75 companies, is in for further expansion.

In the second phase of expansion that has been set rolling, a six-lakh square feet building is being constructed on the Technopark campus at a cost of Rs 50 crore. The 11-floor centrally air-conditioned building will be the single largest office structure in the State.

TCS has been allotted 25 acres of land on the campus for its software development centre. This is in addition to the 14 acres given to them for setting up the company's new training centre. Another company, IBS Software, has been allotted five acres for constructing a two-lakh sq. ft. office building.

Apart from these, the Government has acquired 86 acres of land adjoining the campus, of which 50 acres have been earmarked for Infosys and the balance 36 acres for US Technology International.

The Chief Minister, Mr Oommen Chandy, told newspersons here on Monday that the second phase of expansion, which is expected to be completed by the end of 2007, would fetch an investment of Rs 1,000 crore and create 20,000 jobs. In the third phase of expansion, the Government will acquire another 100 acres of land to meet the anticipated demand for space by IT and IT-related companies.

As of now, L&T has evinced interest in setting up a 30-acre `Infocity' here. The entire 186 acres under the second and third phases of expansion would be promoted as s special economic zone for IT and ITES industries, the Chief Minister said.

Mr Chandy said that a delegation from Liberty group of Italy would hold talks with State Government officials on Tuesday in connection with the establishment of an `Italian Fashion Village' in Kochi. The Government had entered into a memorandum of understanding with the group in November last year and the Chief Minister hoped that the proposal could be finalised soon. A delegation from Qatar is also slated to visit the State on June 9 and 10 to explore the possibilities of making investments here.

The Government would prepare a list of projects for the Qatar team in areas ranging from energy and petrochemicals to tourism infrastructure, Mr P.H. Kurien, Secretary for IT, who was also present, said.

Another foreign entity that has shown interest in making investments in the State is Malaysia Multimedia Super Corridor.

The company has made enquiries with the Government for establishing an IT park, Mr Kurien said and added that a delegation from the Malaysian company would come here by this month-end for holding preliminary discussions.

State Information Infrastructure: The Chief Minister inaugurated the State Information Infrastructure (SII) that is designed to provide a common IT backbone for the rollout of the Government's e-governance programme.

The SII consists of two facilities, namely, the e-governance data centre and the information backbone. The 12-crore project is jointly funded by the Department of Information Technology of the Union Government and its State Government counterpart.

While the Kerala State IT Mission is the nodal agency for managing the project, the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) is the implementing agency.

The private bandwidth providers have each offered 2 mbps free bandwidth in return to the right-of-way granted to them. The State information backbone extends from Thiruvananthapuram to Kozhikode with network centres at Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi and Kozhikode.

The e-governance data centre has been set up at the Co-bank Towers here. It has a server farm to host the Web servers, mail servers, database servers and application servers required by various government departments.

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