The Haryana government has released Rs 283.5 crore for the construction of Qutub Minar-Gurgaon metro corridor to ensure the completion of the project by January 2010.
The released amount is the second instalment of Haryana share for the metro corridor, which is being constructed at a total cost of Rs 681 crore. The corridor is likely to be commissioned by January 2010.
When completed, the metro corridor is likely to be a boost to IT and ITES companies in Haryana. Till now, an expenditure of Rs 154.77 crore has been incurred on the project and now the state government has sent in Rs 283.5 crore to Metro Rail Corporation to expedite the work. The length of the metro rail link is 7.08 km, which will have five stations Garden Estate, Sikenderpur, DT City Centre, IFFCO Chowk and Sushant Lok. This would increase connectivity between Delhi and Gurgaon.
An official spokesman of the Haryana government on the eve of Haryana Day falling on November 1(the day Haryana was carved out as a separate state from Punjab) said the state had become very popular with investors and particularly Gurgaon was the cynosure of all eyes as far as investment flow was concerned. Little doubt that today world’ s top names in information technology were vying with each other to set up their units and offices in Haryana.
The big IT companies which have set up their units in Haryana include Hughes Software, Tata Consultancy service, HCL, GE Capital and Silicon Graphics Alcatel, American Express, Convergys, Motorola, Ericcson, Polaris, Sapient, Hewitt, Dell, Samsung, Aricent, Microsoft, IBM, Siemens, Fidelity, Genpact, Oracle, WNS, Google, Accenture and Wipro.
It is fast emerging as a major industrial centre as during the tenure of present Haryana government, an investment of Rs 4,107 crore has been made and 1,976 large, medium and small scale industrial units being set up in Gurgaon alone. In fact, total exports in information technology and ITES industry from Gurgaon had reached Rs 18,000 crore at the end of last financial year. In 2006-07, the software export from Gurgaon was Rs 15,000 crore whereas it was Rs 10,700 crore in 2005-06.
Referring to the details of industrial units set up during this period in Gurgaon, he said out of these units, 1,924 small scale units have been set up with an investment of Rs. 1,531 crore and these units provided employment avenues to 45,600 unemployed youth. He said 52 large and medium scale industrial units were set up with an investment of Rs. 2,576 crore and 12,455 youth were provided employment opportunities.
The new units have been set up under IT and ITES, automobile, garments manufacturiSng, electronics and automobile parts manufacturing units. The industry is growing at a rate of about 40% in Gurgaon, which is much above the national average of about 28%. In order to provide boost to the IT industry, a regional IT industry promotion office has been set up in Gurgaon.
After announcement of new industry policy by the Haryana government, the economic growth of Gurgaon is estimated to reach 10 % to 15% during the next five years as compared to national growth rate of 8 % to 9% in the prevailing liberal industrial atmosphere.