Odisha mulls new BPO policy

Odisha government, which is giving final touches to its business process outsourcing (BPO) policy, aims to create 10,000 BPO seats in the state, especially in the rural pockets.

"Our policy will be encouraging the willing entrepreneurs to setup centres even at the district levels.The policy to be finalized soon will add 5,000 to 10,000 BPO seats in the state and will be an open end policy", said a government official.

The state government will give incentive in excess of Rs 1 lakh, which is the limit fixed under the Government of India policy.The state has been allotted 1,900 seats to be created under the India BPO promotion scheme by the Union government.

 

Those getting incentives under the Government of India scheme may not be eligible under the state government's policy. Apart from the locations where the STPI (Software Technology Parks of India ) centres are located in the state, the BPO centres will also be encouraged at other district head quarters, added the official.

Odisha has eight STPI centres out of which four are newly approved by the Union government.The new centres will come up at Jajpur, Anugul, Koraput (Jeypur) and Sambalpur.The four centres already functional in the state are located at Bhubaneswar, Berhampur, Rourkela and Balasore.

The proposed scheme will help in achieving the employment target of the state ICT (information and communication technology) policy 2014.The ICT policy targets to achieve direct employment of 60,000 professionals in 800 IT/ITes/ESDM (electronic system design and manufacturing) units.

According to reports Ahmadabad, Kochi, Kolkata and Jaipur along with Bhubaneswar, Cochin, Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram, Chandigarh and Indore are fast emerging as new destinations for business process management (BPM), a synonym to BPO industry.

The Indian BPM industry is expected to reach total revenue of $300 billion by 2020.