The Hindu Business Line : STPIs have to redraw priorities: Panel

The committee said STPI could gear itself to render incubation facilities to new entrepreneurs/graduate engineers, besides playing an effective role in computer education by devising market-oriented training programmes aimed at sharpening the skill-sets of the younger generation.

New Delhi , Dec. 28

THE Standing Committee on Information Technology has said Software Technology Park (STP) centres are yet to be set up in many States, as a result of which there has been uneven performance in software exports.

According to its report on implementation of the software technology park scheme , some of the important objectives of the STP scheme, such as imparting training had gone awry over the years, and the role of the Software Technology Park of India (STPI) had been relegated to a mere certifying agency.

The report was tabled in the winter session of Parliament by the Standing Committee's Chairman, Mr Somnath Chatterjee.

The committee said it had been brought to its notice that from 2005, the existence of the STPI would be under threat in the emerging liberalised era consequent to the signing of the Information Technology Agreement (ITA) of the WTO. The ITA would facilitate availability of bandwidth at cheaper rates due to competition among a number of bandwidth providers, cheaper optical fibre connectivity against the existing costlier satellite connectivity and duty-free imports. In such a scenario, single window clearance would lose its meaning and STPIs might become redundant, it said.

However, it added that STPI could still play a meaningful role by redrawing its priorities. The committee said STPI could gear itself to render incubation facilities to new entrepreneurs/graduate engineers, besides playing an effective role in computer education by devising market-oriented training programmes aimed at sharpening the skill-sets of the younger generation. There also appears to be enormous opportunities in human resource development in information technology, it said.

Expressing satisfaction that the STPI's share in software exports had increased to about 80 per cent by the year 2002-03 from a less than 8 per cent share when it began its operation, the committee said it was encouraging that during 2002-03, the country's software exports stood at Rs 46,100 crore, of which STPI's share was Rs 37,176 crore. But it said there was an unbalanced growth of software exports in various centres.

While performance of leading centres such as Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Noida, Pune and Mumbai had been good, Bhubaneswar, Gandhinagar and Thiruvananthapuram lagged behind. Such disparate performance in different regions was ascribed to lack of proactive State government policies, absence of conducive work culture and lack of marketing efforts.

Since the mandate is with the STPI to ensure systematic growth of each of the centre, the committee felt an in-depth study should be carried out to see how these bottlenecks could be overcome. "An assessment to see whether the potential in every centre is exploited properly and adequately would certainly contribute towards a balanced growth of exports from different centres and thereby ensure a balanced development in the entire software industry," it added.

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