3rd IT Park in Siliguri to come up soon

MP | Kolkata: The third IT park in Siliguri is coming up soon.

The park will come up on Mirik Road and is likely to be opened in August. Final touches are being given. Out of 32 modalities, 25 have been provisionally booked.

Debashis Sen, additional chief secretary, IT department visited the park to oversee the progress of work.

It may be mentioned that Bengal is getting a huge response from the private sector in terms of occupying spaces by IT firms in the newly-developed IT Parks, set up mostly in smaller cities, increasing chances of generating good employment in the sector across the state. "New IT parks are getting a huge response from the private sector, some of them are already filled up," said state commerce and industries minister Amit Mitra during the inaugural session of the 15th "Technology Senate", held recently. With the setting up of 12 new IT Parks, the total number of such parks in West Bengal now stands at 20.

On the amount of investment these new IT parks could attract, the minister said: "Investment is not a big deal here because in IT industry it is not very big. Square footage (total space occupied by firms) and the number of people employed in the parks are more important."

In IT parks in Siliguri (in North Bengal), around 700 people are expected to work. Purulia's new IT park are getting a very good response from IT companies. "They must be doing BPO there with employing local boys and girls," Mitra maintained. The state government is searching for an anchor investor for developing data analytics business at the Kalyani facility (in Nadia district).

Elaborating on a number of steps the government had taken to facilitate growth of IT industry in tier-II and tier-III cities, the minister pointed out that developing entrepreneurship remained a challenge.

However, big IT companies were creating huge employment opportunities in the state, he said. "In addition to 35,000 people employed by TCS (Tata Consultancy Services) in West Bengal, the company will hire around 20,000 additional people for its new campus," he added.