Mumbai: The information technology sector would generate four lakh new jobs this year, which would be about 25 per cent higher than the previous year''s, industry body Nasscom said.

"The sector will add four lakh jobs this year. Last year, the revenue from IT industry was $32 billion with a workforce of 1.6 million," Nasscom president Kiran Karnik said during the opening of the Kolkata office.

The growth came despite the industry was being saddled with minimum alternate tax, tax on ESOP and tax on service apartment, he said, adding that the effects of these will be felt in the long run as these would be impediments to the growth of start-ups, though large companies may not be affected.

Karnik also wanted the government to allow existing benefits for software technology parks of India (STPIs) beyond 2009 to support the new and small IT companies.

Meanwhile, he said a Data Security Council of India would soon be formalised and it was proposed to have a board where most members would be from outside the industry. The council would be self-regulatory in nature and would be a step forward in controlling cyber crimes.

Karnik also unveilied plans to reach out to the north-east and Kashmir regions as these areas had been left out of the IT-race due to lack of training opportunities.

Though there was a considerable chunk of bright and educated population in the North East, several of the youth could not participate in the IT growth due to lack of opportunities in these regions, Karnik said on the sidelines of launching a new web-learning product, rRapid Suite.

If these youth were exposed to just three to four months of training programme, they could imbibe industry specific skills that could turn them employable, he said.

As part of its initiative to reach this sector, NASSCOM would launch its BPO related NASSCOM Assessment Competency Tool for the North East region in the next three months. The assessment tool would cover nearly 20,000 youth, he said.

Once these students were equipped with training certificates, they automatically would be picked up by IT industry since the certifications were common benchmark.

The next phase of development would see companies coming out with specific packages for these youths and subsequently the trained Kashmiri youth could themselves turn entrepreneurs in the region. He, however, refused to give a time-frame for the Kashmir training project.