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IT park at Dona Paula
Rahul Kamat
The importance of the IT industry is dawning on Goa. Info Tech Corporation of Goa has proposed to construct state-of-the-art infrastructure for the Rajiv Gandhi IT Habitat Park (Hi-Tech-Habitat Park) on about 95 acres of land at Dona-Paula, near Panjim. Under the project, plots of 1 to 4 acres will be allotted to the IT industry for setting up IT/ITES units, multi-tenant buildings, incubation centre with advanced hi-tech shared facilities and engineering support, to name a few.
As Chief Minister Pratapsingh Rane told Projectmonitor, "The state has tremendous potential to attract investments in BPO. I think this is an important industry and no one can ignore it but due to some negligence we didn't succeed in attracting too much investment in this sector. However, by setting up Hi-Tech-Habitat Park we will be able to attract foreign players." The project is going to be only for BPO companies and many foreign companies had shown interest in setting up their IT units in the habitat park, Rane revealed.
According to Dayanand Narvekar, Minister for IT & Health, while the IT sector in the
country is booming, Goa isn't contributing single paise to the IT revenue. "By setting up an IT park in Goa we will at least contribute some revenue and provide employment to the local people, he says. Info Tech Corporation of Goa has invited pre-qualification bids from reputed developers to develop infrastructure services at the IT park.
Goa's IT policy comes with a spate of incentives. For instance, if a company employs local people the former will get Rs 15,000 as incentive per employee per annum for two years; additional incentive of 5 per cent for commissioning operations before March 2007; 25 per cent subsidy on consumption of water and power; and 25 per cent capital subsidy for in-house back-up power plant.
[27 February, 2006]
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