“Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Southern Region would focus on a ten-point agenda and also implement the key recommendations of Vision 2025 Documents towards making Southern Region a front-runner in socio-economic development.  Skills & Employability, Infrastructure Development, Promotion of MSMEs, Development of Tier II & III Cities, Agriculture and Education are some of the thrust areas to be focused upon to accelerate the growth of Southern States,” said Dr B V R Mohan Reddy, Chairman, CII – Southern Region and Chairman & Managing Director, Infotech Enterprises Ltd.

He said that in Tamil Nadu, CII would strive to speed up the expansion of existing Chennai Airport and establishment of green-field international airport, improving road connectivity to ports and rolling out of Chennai-MAP (Marakkanam, Arakkonam & Pulicat) region.

Addressing a Press Conference here today and unveiling the theme for the year - “South India @ 75 - The Emerging Agenda”, Dr Reddy said that CII-SR is setting up a task force to take forward the key recommendations of Vision Quarter One, a ‘visioning exercise’ for the Southern Region States and align the visioning exercise with Prof C K Prahalad’s National Vision on ‘India@75’. He said that the key focus areas of the Vision 2025 Documents include: thrust on agriculture growth, skills, employability & manpower development, enhancing MSMEs competitiveness, building inclusive cities and focus on sustainable development.

Dr Reddy said that CII’s skills initiative will ensure that over 25,000 school dropouts in the Southern Region States are trained on work skills and modular employable skills for employment.  It would adopt 92 ITIs in Southern Region for upgradation through PPP scheme and train about 5000 faculty members on ‘soft skills’ through industry-university consortium across the region. It would also work for the introduction of ‘soft skills’ as choice based credit system (CBSE) in fifteen universities in Tamil Nadu and set up Skills Academy at Chennai. CII would also enhance the employability of 10,000 socially disadvantaged students under its Affirmative Action initiatives.  CII would also facilitate in providing continuous education for industry workers to lead to either University Degree or Certificate from TN Open University.

Dr Reddy said that CII believes that tier II & III cities such as Hosur, Erode, Vizag, Vijayawada, Belgaum and Kottayam are the new destination for investments and the growth engines of economy. There is a tremendous business potential in such “One Billion plus dollar” economies.  As for the tier II & III city development initiatives, CII would also speed up the expansion work at Trichy and Madurai Airport, four and six-laning works from Madurai to the southern districts of the State, the developmental works at Thoothukudi Port, Puducherry–Chennai  Railway line on East Coast Road.

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