Ministry Accepts Proposal On Stpi Corporatisation

The IT ministry has in principle accepted the proposal by the Infrastructure Leasing and Financing Services to corporatise the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI). The government has also decided to corporatise the National Informatic Centre (NIC).

The government had appointed IL&FS last year to look into the functioning of STPI and come out with a strategy to provide more functional autonomy to it. According to sources, the government has done this to make STPI more profit-oriented and revenue driven.

However, for NIC the government is yet to give the mandate to any agency to look into how to give more functional autonomy to it. "NIC was set up about 30 years back to help the government in its various information technology functions. However, over the past 20 years things have changed so much that we need to look into the functioning of NIC," a senior government official said.

 

The government plans to redesign NIC as the nodal e-governance planning and implementation agency for the government. "The redesigning of NIC is going to happen along these lines and the ministry feels that to help it perform its function it needs to be corporatised," he said.

In the case of STPI the government will also divest its stake in it in a phased manner once it is corporatised. In the first phase, the government will bring down the government holding in the STPI to 51 per cent, that will subsequently be brought down to 26 per cent.

"We expect that this will give the STPI the required flexibility to function as a corporate entity and once this happens the government will bring down its stake in it," a senior official said. Besides, the government is exploring possibilities of raising money from the capital market for the expansion plan charted out for the STPI.

It has been assessed that the STPI would require about Rs. 300 crore for setting up incubating infrastructure for the STPI units and enhancement of capabilities, and launching various new schemes for the units working under the STPI umbrella.

According to sources, STPI is expecting to raise about Rs 50 crore through internal accruals, Rs 100 from the government and the rest from the financial institutions and strategic investors and other schemes. These are part of the corporatisation plan of the STPI, that operates currently as a society under the ministry of information technology (MIT).

In addition to this the government is also looking for strategic partners in the expansion plan of the government owned society. "What the government is looking for is a partner who can be part of the development activity of the STPI," sources said.

The government is also considering to offer equity partnership in the company to units operating out of the STPI lawns. STPI currently runs 12 technology parks in the country and houses about 800 software units, a large number of which are small and medium, scale enterprises.