In an exclusive interview with The Financial Express, Dr Betancur said to start with, the government would train over 5,000 students in Colombia and provide them with computers besides creating job opportunities for them.To this end, the Colombian government was currently in talks with several big and small IT training firms in India in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Chennai. The country already has a couple of computer and software training institutions from Ireland, India and the US. ``For telephony technology we will look at Scotland and Ireland,'' she said.

These IT initiatives would be taken in association with the private corporates. ``The government has already identified six large Colombian private firms from sectors like beer & food processing, jewellery & leather, publishing, pharmaceuticals, textiles, coal & steel and airlines.'' To carry out these initiatives, the country would also get into financial collaborations with firms in India, the US and European Union countries, she added.

Colombia to emulate Indian IT model Colombia would also set up a technology city for e-commerce, rural technology training programmes (a holistic programme) and development of software, Dr Betancur said. The president's Social Economic Programmes has already cleared the project, however, the size area of the city and the investment were yet to be worked out, she said.Dr Betancur said that under the Agenda of Connectivity Programme, the whole of Colombia was currently getting wired up using optical fibre. The IT agenda would cover areas like e-commerce, e-governance, English education, science and technology, etc, she said.

``It is imperative that the government defines a clear and long-term strategy that universalises basis education and improves its quality in the aspects related to technology, mathematics and English,'' she said.The Agenda of Connectivity represented the meeting of the oriented actions to impel the social and economic development of Colombia through Internet technologies, she said. The agenda would also focus on areas like: access to the information infrastructure by strengthening the national infrastructure of telecommunications, use of IT in education, use of IT in public and private corporate firms and promotion of favourable attitude to IT in the national industry.

According to Dr Betancur, the proximity to the US market would be an advantage to the country in terms of fast growth. Colombia used to be a Spanish colony and the US and European Union countries still import flowers, coffee, fruits and leather items from the country. Colombia opened up its economy in 1991 and it currently has over 60 MNCs. The country has strong in food processing, export of fruit extracts and juices to the US, Venenzeula, Canada and Mexico.

Colombia has a population of 40 million - against 400 million of the entire Latin America - with literacy rate of 95 per cent. The Colombian president Andres Pastrana is scheduled to make an IT exploratory visit to India during early March along with a business delegation.