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Agreeing to the state government’s demand, the Union ministry of communications & information technology has accorded in principle approval for establishment of six new STPI (software technological parks of India) centres in Odisha.
Union minister, Ravi Shankar Prasad, in a letter to the state IT minister, Pranab Prakash Das has apprised the latter about the approval. Prasad has directed the concerned officials to take steps for setting up the new centres. The approved STPIs will be located at Jajpur, Sambalpur, Koraput (Jeypur), Angul and Kalahandi (Bhawanipatana).
It may be noted that Das had earlier written to the Centre proposing the locations for six new STPI units. In his meeting with the Union minister on July 7, Das had raised the demand for these new centres.
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With the current approval, the state will now boast of having 10 STPI units. At present, there are four STPI centres in the state at Bhubaneswar, Berhampur, Rourkela and Balasore. Barring the Balasore unit, which is under construction, the other three centres are now operational and contribute the major chunk to the state’s IT export basket. More than 100 IT units of the state are registered with STPI.
Official sources said, a joint feasibility study will be conducted for the establishment of new centres. In the first phase, the feasibility report of three proposed locations at Samablpur, Jajpur and Angul will be sent to the Centre.
STPI was set up with the objective of encouraging, promoting and boosting the software exports from India. It maintains internal engineering resources to provide consulting, training and implementation services.
STPI also plans to set up a facilitation centre at Bhubaneswar with a mandate to give boost to the IT sector in the state. The centre will have software and hardware incubation facility, data centre for the use of IT industries. The Union ministry has sanctioned about Rs 49 crore for the project in the first phase for taking up the civil infrastructure work.
