ISLAMABAD, June 16: The government has allocated an amount of Rs2.1 billion in order to promote IT and telecom sector in the fiscal year 2003-04.

The amount would be spent on initiating and implementing a number of new and on-going development projects to achieve economic prosperity, official sources said here on Monday.

In addition to this amount, the sources said, Rs1500 million would be given by the government to the ministry of information technology for launching more such projects.

One of the main projects is E-Governance programme being followed aggressively to deliver dynamic and transaction oriented interfaces to the public, the sources said.

The projects included electronic offices for selected divisions and websites for Pakistani missions abroad; a state-of-the-art infrastructure for connectivity and inter-connectivity; laying down core standards for IT applications and system architectures; and finalizing projects in order to train the teachers, the sources said.

The projects like industrial automation, internships, international exhibitions, e-commerce infrastructure and applications would be continued.

More financial incentives were proposed to strengthen a strong domestic IT Industry, the sources added.—APP