Bangalore, Jan 7: In a significant development the Information Technology exports for the year 2007-2008 the software exports from Bangalore are expected to cross rupees 70000 crores compared to rupees 49000 crores last year. Software exports are expected to cross rupees 8500 crores compared to rupees 4500 crores last year. alking to ANI in an exclusive interview the Information and Bio Technology Secretary MN Vidhyashankar has said Karnataka will cross rupees 100 thousand crores by
2011.
The fall in dollar and rupee appreciation has not affected the IT sector at all. "IT sector is expanding in a big way with addition of 78 new companies in Bangalore, Mangalore and Hubli last year and we have crossed over 500 thousand employees.

And Karnataka is the only state were IT sector has more employees than the state sector," added Vidyashankar.

Commenting on the various new initiatives complementing the growth in the sector he said: 'We are going to have the biggest IT park and country's first International Centre for Nano Science and Technology will be set in Bangalore and Professor CNR Rao would be heading the vision board."

He said the Global University of Bio Technology (BT) sector will also be housed in Bangalore and the state of art BT park with the investment of over rupees 5000 crore will be developed by Alexandria, who have developed around 150 biotech parks in US.

He further said that Bangalore has added 23 new companies in BT sector Last year and there has been a tremendous growth initiative in Marine BT. Therefore IT and BT growth rate has been stable in the state. (ANI)