NEW DELHI: The Union government is planning to expand its BPO promotion scheme under the Digital India initiative, with Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad stating on Monday that it will more than double the number of seats under the scheme.
Launched a few years earlier, the India BPO Promotion scheme (IBPS) is aimed at creating employment opportunities and promoting BPO operations across the country to secure balanced regional growth of IT/ITES industry.
The scheme provides capital support along with special incentives upto Rs 1 lakh/seat, and the initial plan was to support about 48,300 seats.
According to Prasad, the government will now increase the capacity under the scheme to one lakh seats from the current 48,000 seats.
“BPOs are going to start soon in smaller cities like Gaya and Gazipur...They are already operational in Guwahati, Muzaffarpur, Patna and other places...in all 91 in 27 States..,” the minister said here, adding that the government’s objective is that youth should find employment near their cities and towns, have materialised.
He also pointed out that the allocation of 31,732 seats for BPO units operating from smaller towns has created new employment avenues with the potential to offer nearly 2 lakh direct and indirect jobs to youth under India BPO promotion scheme and North East BPO promotion scheme.
As part of promoting the IT sector, the government will also build the fifth ‘National Data Centre’ — the largest of such centres — will come up in Bhopal with a capacity of five lakh virtual servers.
National Data Centres - that host government websites, services and apps - are currently operational at four locations - Pune, Hyderabad, Delhi and Bhubaneswar.