The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has stated in its report on the economic sector for the year ending March 2017 that there was “a short-achievement of the objectives of development of IT industry and creation of IT jobs in Andhra Pradesh (A.P.)”.
It observed that the audit scrutiny of the Information Technology, Electronics and Communications department revealed that monitoring of the projects was poor and there were abnormal delays in the implementation of projects to which land had been allotted. Even the completed IT units did not fully create the targeted employment. The results were, therefore, not up to the mark.
The CAG mentioned that the incubation centres in Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Kakinada were only partly serving their purpose and in the absence of documentation of their performance, there was no assurance that the objective of promoting start-up companies had been achieved.
The CAG recommended that the ITE&CD should implement a long-term action plan to achieve the goals on IT investment and exports front and in creating jobs as per the IT Policy 2014-20.
It recommended that the ITE&C should put in place a monitoring mechanism including the stipulation of periodical reports from the IT units and implementing agencies and constitute an expert panel for assessing the performance of incubators.
It was observed that the process of recommending units by the Consultative Committee on IT Industry for land allotments was deficient.
Of the 79,530 square feet in the incubation centres in the three cities, MoUs could be entered with incubators for only 22,256 square feet. Of the remaining space, the ITE&CD was utilising 33,500 square feet and the rest was unutilised.
Only 14 of the 25 units which were allotted land in 2006-2012 had completed construction and commenced operations.
The number of jobs created stood at 4,326 as of July 2017 as against the employment generation target of 10,809 as per the MoUs concluded with 23 units.