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Orissa gears up to attract IT investors

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DQW Bureau
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Over the last two years West Bengal and Orissa have emerged as strong
contenders for becoming the next IT hub of the country. The Orissa gover-nment
has initiated many projects to attract IT to the state. The first STPI of Orissa
was started in Bhubaneswar in 1992 with about four software development
companies and had exports worth around Rs 21 lakh. Gradually software giants
like Satyam and Infosys also jumped on the bandwagon.

Presently Orissa has been ranked as seventh in the country as far as software
export is concerned. In 2005—06 the state had exports worth of Rs 600 crore.
The state has a set target Rs 1,000 crore to be achieved by 2008.

Throwing light on the state's IT policy and future plans Surjya Narayan
Patro, Minister, Energy and Informa-tion Technology, Government of Orissa said,
“We have identified and established a separate landscape in Bhubaneswar,
called the Infocity and have dedicated it for the development of IT and ITeS
industry. Recently Infocity was declared as a special economic zone (SEZ) which
will ensure more facilities for the investors.”

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Surjya Narayan Patro,
Minister, Energy and Information Technology, Government of Orissa

To attract IT companies land inside Infocity is available at a nominal rate
of Rs 15 lakh per acre. The other facilities intro-duced by the state government
matches well with the high-tech infrastructure requisition of the IT industry.

“Among all other prominent facilities provided by the government are non
application of labor laws, proper broad-band connectivity and allot-ment of less
stamp duty for land registration within Infocity. IT majors like TCS, Wipro,
Mindtree and Hexa-ware have already signed MoU with us to setup their
infrastructure in the state. Land has been allotted to them and they have
already started their activities,” Patro elaborated.

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The government's proactive stand has drawn many compa-nies to the state and
the land at Infocity is almost exhausted. The government is now on lookout for
another area to identify and create Infocity Phase II. Throwing light on the
next phase Patro said, “We have identified an area of more than 200 acres
between Cuttack and Bhubaneswar to accommodate future inves-tors. On the
national highway it is just 15 kms away from the state capital.”

That apart the state govern-ment is also setting up Know-ledge Centers in
rural areas, to take IT to the masses.

Interestingly, unlike soft-ware the hardware industry in Orissa is yet to
develop. “As far as hardware industry is concerned we are waiting for the
manufacturers to app-roach us for setting up their factories,” Patro added.

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Currently the state is gearing up to become BPO friendly and is holding talks
with several international clients. The government is also planning to set up
institutes to provide training so that the local manpower becomes competitive as
per the industry requirement. Right now there are about 40 local BPO operators
in the city.

Piyali Guha, Bhubaneswar, June 1

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