Satyam pullout to cost Australia 175 million dollars loss India News and Travel Times Provides India-centric and other News and Features

Australia's Victoria province faces a 175 million dollars loss following the cancellation of a Mahindra Satyam-led IT project that was set to create 2000 jobs in Geelong. Victorian Premier John Brumby, who promised Geelong residents a gold chest at the end of the rainbow, launched the scheme in April 2008. "This will be 2000 jobs, 75 million dollars worth of capital works and, on our estimates, Treasury modelling, around 175 million dollars worth of additional activity in the Victorian economy each year," Brumby had said then. The new jobs would have been created over a span of eight years -- the duration of the project by Indian IT Company, but Satyam found the project financially unviable and decided to pull out, a decision it says all stakeholders, including the government, agreed to, The Australian reports. The government couldn't explain how it would fill the economic gap left by the project's demise. A spokesman for Victorian IT Minister John Lenders deflected the question by saying: "Victorians are concerned about the global economy, that's why we are taking action to invest a record 11.5 billion dollars on infrastructure to secure 35,000 Victorian jobs this year."' The state Opposition said the project's failure was another example of mismanagement in Victoria under Labor. The Opposition believes Premier Brumby gave Victorians false hope by promising job creation in a region already crippled by the collapse or exit of manufacturing and automotive companies. Satyam's Australia chief Venki Prathivadi said his company was disappointed with the outcome and the decision was made after extensive talks with the Victorian government and others over the past few weeks.