AP News Agreement for US consulate in HYD to be signed on Tuesday
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| Agreement for US consulate in HYD to be signed on Tuesday |
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Andhra Pradesh Government will sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU)
on July 3 with the American authorities for establishment of US
Consulate in Hyderabad. The MoU will be signed in the presence of Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhar Reddy and US Consul General, Chennai, David T Hopper. Initially, a temporary Consulate office will be located at the Paigah Palace which presently houses the Hyderabad Urban Development Authority office. The permanent office building is to be constructed at Madhapur, the city's IT hub, for which the state government had offered a 10-acre site. Since the construction of buildings at the site would take time, the government had offered temporary accommodation to get the Consulate functional without delay. The Consulate, the fourth after Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, is expected to become operational later this year. The fourth US Consulate in the country was announced by US President George W Bush during his visit to the city in March last year. The establishment of the Consulate meets a long-pending demand of the state as Andhra Pradesh accounts for highest number of IT professionals and students in the US. Of about 80,000 Indian students pursuing higher education in America, over 50,000 are from Andhra. A recent survey had revealed that 30 per cent of the Indian IT workforce in the US is from the state.             |