As a part of its endeavour to expedite the formulation of its much awaited new ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) policy, the state IT department has constituted a committee consisting of different stakeholders as its members.

“The committee on the new ICT policy has been formed recently. This committee comprises of about a dozen members chosen from the state IT department, Orissa Computer Application Centre (OCAC) and the Information Technology Association of Orissa”, a top IT official told Business Standard.

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The state IT department is coming out with a new ICT policy after a gap of more than five years.

Apart from including the best IT practices of states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh and positioning Orissa as a favourable destination for IT investments, the new ICT policy would also contain enabling measures for growth of IT SMEs (small and medium enterprises).

It may be noted that the SMEs had demanded the introduction of a focused ICT (information and communication technology) policy which provides an investment subsidy of 15-20 per cent on a capital cost of up to Rs 20 lakh for upcoming IT units.

The SMEs had also sought complete exemption from VAT (value added tax) on hardware procurement by the units as well as ‘plug and play’ office space for the upcoming units.

The new ICT policy of the Orissa government assumes significance as the state had emerged as one of the attractive destinations for the IT sector. While the big four of the IT sector including Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), Infosys Technologies, Wipro Technologies and Satyam Computers already have a presence in Orissa, other IT players like MindTree Consulting, Genpact, Zensar Technologies, Mumbai-based Raheja Corporation and Kolkata-based Apeejay Surrendra Group had also announced their projects in the state.

Besides, the state IT department was also going for the Infocity-II project which was to be developed on an area of over 500 acres at Janla on the outskirts of the city. The state government had made a budgetary allocation of Rs 150 crore for developing the external infrastructure for the project.

Work on the Infocity-II project is set to begin in April this year and the project was scheduled to be fully operational by the end of 2012.

Infosys Technologies would be the anchor tenant of the Infocity-II project and the state government would allot 100 acres to the company for setting up its second software development centre in the city.

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