Hyderabad: IT and industries minister Sridhar Babu said that a slump in information technology exports since the Congress came to power was a result of “technology taking a different turn,” which he said the state government would like to learn from.
Addressing the Telangana assembly budget session on the demand for grants in the municipal administration, IT and industries sectors on Monday, March 24, he assured that the state government will continue the good policies of the previous BRS government, and would learn from the mistakes made in the past.
On the issue of IT exports falling from 31% during BRS government, to 11% during the Congress’ 11-month rule as alleged by Quthbullapur MLA KP Vivekanand Goud, he said that the actual numbers will come out by May, 2025, and that presently, as per his knowledge, the IT exports stood somewhere around 22%.
“We are comparing governments within our state saying IT exports went from Rs 56,000 crore in 2014 to around 2.4 lakh crore when BRS lost power, but we are not comparing it with Bengaluru’s IT exports of Rs 8 lakh crore,” he noted.
He said emerging technologies like the Artificial Intelligence (AI), which has been reshaping the IT landscape, has disrupted everything, and would continue to do so in the near future.
He said he was ready to take suggestions from BRS working president KT Rama Rao (who wasn’t in the house), to take the growth of IT industry in Telangana to the next level going forward.
He also said that 70 new global capability centres (GCC) came to Hyderabad, and the state government was experimenting on them presently.
On the issue of scarcity of drinking water in Hyderabad, he said that the people of Hyderabad were thinking that the main reason was a seven-year delay by the BRS government in completing the Keshavapuram project under the Godavari Phase 2 project, which could have assured 100 million gallons per day (MGD) to the city.
He said that the Musi Riverfront Development Project was a regenerative project of the state government, which would not only add beauty, but would also increase the quality in the lives of the people living in Hyderabad.
He spoke in detail about the H-City project, the works covered under the project, and the sanitation, road extensions, nala development, flyovers, tunnel corridors, flyovers, and basic infrastructure for pedestrians being planned, and being implemented by the state government.
He assured that the traffic congestion problem in the eastern part of Hyderabad would be solved through the elevated corridors being constructed in Paradise-Shamirpet and Paradise-Dairy Farm Road junctions (18 km elevated corridor), for over Rs 17,500 crore.
He said that the Build Now application that would ease the process of obtaining permissions for constructing buildings, would simplify the process to the extent of granting permissions “on the go” in the near future.
He said artificial intelligence was being used in the system to facilitate the same.
He said that after April 10, the Build Now system/application would be expanded to cover other municipalities and municipal corporations across the state.
“It will not only bring the response time for permissions from 5-6 months to 10 minutes, but in the near future we want to use AI to grant the permissions on the go,” he wished.
