THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The state’s total IT exports have almost doubled this year from 2016, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan announced on Friday.While the exports fetched 9,753 crore in 2016, it rose to Rs 17,536 crore in 2022. The number of companies increased from 640 to 1,106 and employees from 78,068 to 1,35,288. The CM said the growth reflected the LDF government’s committed efforts to uplift the IT sector.
A top IT department official said the state has registered an impressive 30% growth in revenue from IT exports since March 2021.“That this growth has been recorded pan-Kerala amid the pandemic is a great achievement for the state,” said the official. The rise in export revenue is proportional to the addition of IT space in Technopark, Infopark and Cyberpark.
The growth figures are based on a survey done in March 2021. For instance, Infopark in Kochi alone has registered an export revenue of Rs 8,200 crore in the last 15 months, up from Rs 6,310 crore in 2020-21.
A corresponding growth is registered at Technopark and Cyberpark as well.
“Generally, there is an exponential growth in Kerala’s IT sector. There is a huge demand for IT space here. Many big companies want to invest in Kerala. So we need to create a good infrastructure. It is going on. Similarly, the future investments in Kerala will be at both government and private IT parks. So we are expecting robust growth in IT exports in future,” Kerala IT Parks interim CEO Snehil Kumar Singh told TNIE.
As per the last four years’ statistics, Technopark still tops in IT export revenue generation. The facility increased its revenue from Rs 7,890 crore in 2019-20 to `8,501 crore in 2020-21 compared to Rs 7,000 crore in 2018-19.
Infopark bagged a revenue of Rs 6,310 crore in 2020-21 compared to Rs 5,200 crore in 2019-20. In 2018-19, the figure was Rs 4.500 crore. As far as Cyberpark is concerned, Rs 26.16 crore in revenue was registered in 2020-21 while it was Rs 14.76 crore in 2019-20. In 2018-19, it generated Rs 8.11 crore.
Pinarayi had told the assembly recently that the state’s parks will get a huge additional space and see a vast employment generation in the next five years. The planned space and job opportunities are 44 lakh sq ft and 43,000 in Technopark, 15 lakh sq ft and 20,000 jobs in Infopark and 4 lakh sq ft and 4,000 opportunities in Cyberpark.