Union Minister for Tourism and IT, Alphons Kannanthanam has asked Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan to speed up and complete the tourism and IT projects in the state on time bound basis. Kannanthanan said Kerala, which was on the forefront in IT sector once, has been pushed backward. Stating that the Centre has sanctioned various tourism projects to the state, he said some more were on the pipeline.
However, he said new projects could be sanctioned only after the completion of the ongoing projects. “The issue has been discussed with the Chief Minister,” he said. The main focus of the Centre was the welfare of poor and downtrodden, he said. “The government’s programme is to ensure basic amenities including food, shelter, sanitation and education, to the poor and this needed crores of rupees,” he said. Revenue collected from petroleum products were used for implementing projects for them, he said. Inflation rate in the country was only four per cent, which was half per cent less than the permissible rate of RBI, he said.