Goa targets for software sector

| 26 March 1999 23:56 IST

As the mining industry getting exhausted within a decade or two and the tourism industry making its ups and downs, Goa is now planning to consciously develop the software sector, utilising the e-friendly local atmosphere and ample scope for manpower availability.

Despite Goa being presently under the President’s rule, even the bureaucracy is bent upon implementing the decisions taken by the erstwhile Congress government led by Luizinho Faleiro, which collapsed within two months.

A separate department of information technology (DOIT) has already been set up as a single window agency for giving approvals to units setting up business here while the Software Technology Park Authority has been set up to provide single window service to the entrepreneurs, by setting up a Margao - Vasco - Panaji - Mapusa supercorridor.

In addition to the software technology park being set up at the Verna electronic city on the Panaji-Margao highway, the tourist state has now also plans to set up hi-tech habitat at Bambolim, adjacent to the Goa University campus, by acquiring one lakh sq mts of land.

The Verna STP has already started receiving response from the various companies including the major ones like US subsidiary Controlnet India Pvt Ltd developing software for Very Large Scale Integrated Chips (VLSI) and Information Technology India Ltd.

Having a target of Rs 1200 crore software exports by 2003 by setting up at least 50 IT companies, the state government of the former Portuguese colony has decided to focus its marketing in the countries like the USA, Europe, Portugal and Japan.

Though at a much smaller scale, the software exports in Goa have zoomed up from Rs 75 lakh in 1995-96 to Rs 15 crore in 1998-99, indicate the figures. The authorities however admit that this is hardly 0.15 per cent share in the total software exports from India. It aims at exports worth Rs 4000 crore by 2005.

Realising the fact that the state administration is far behind in computer literacy, the government has now also decided to earmark 10 per cent of the budget to computerise every department while also making computer education mandatory for all the graduate courses.

In order to create skilled manpower to make the dream fulfil, Goa is also setting up Institute of Information Technology and Management, besides planning to provide computer and Internet connectivity in every school, college and technical institutes in the state.

The plan is to also make Internet available at all the PCO booths with e-mail and video conferencing facilities which, besides creating the electronic atmosphere, would also help in providing better facilities to the tourists coming to Goa from all over the World.

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