K'taka guns for Rs 4,000 cr of investments

Hubli will play host to an industrial investors' meet in the third week of March. Karnataka minister for large and medium scale industries Katta Subrahmanya Naidu said the event would be part of the effort to develop tier II cities as an industrial hub.

Such meets would also be held at Belgaum and Gulbarga. He said the government aimed at attracting investments to the tune of Rs 4,000 crore in tier II cities. The investors' meet at Shimoga and Mangalore held recently was successful.

Naidu said investors had proposed Rs 565 crore in Shimoga and had already invested Rs 450 crore. In Mangalore, the meet finalised an investment of Rs 3,000 crore and had already filed applications for investment of Rs 2,000 crore.

The minister said senior leaders like L K Advani, chief minister H D Kumaraswamy and deputy chief minister B S Yediyurappa would be invited for the meet.

He claimed that the Suvarna Kayaka Yojana, launched in October 2006, had been providing on-the-job training to 18,000 candidates, and added that by March-end another one lakh jobs would be created. He said concentration would be on IT, ITeS, apparel, engineering, hospitality, security services and construction industries.

The government would join hands with the private sector for the skill development programme and it would contribute Rs 60 crore for the purpose, he added. "Deputy chief minister Yediyurappa has agreed to earmark funds to train the rural students in the IT/ITeS sector," Naidu said.