By IANS,
Kolkata : The Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC) has welcomed the central government’s decision to extend by one year till March 31, 2010, tax exemption available to the IT companies under the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI) scheme.
ESC chairman Sanjiv Narayan said the industry was looking forward to the government for some support to maintain the IT head start. He said: “Export impact of IT, particularly software and ITeS, has got a snowball impact on all other sectors.”
The ESC is hopeful this tax sop would be extended for a few more years.
STPI is a society set up by the department of communication & information technology in 1991 with the objective of encouraging, promoting and boosting the software exports from the country.
ESC eastern region chairman S. Radhakrishnan said: “We will try to utilise this one-year time fully to do our best.”
He added that the ESC was planning to bring IndiaSoft exhibition to West Bengal next year. In this exhibition, usually B2B (business to business) interaction happens between companies. For the past two years, the exhibition was held in Hyderabad where almost 100 companies participated.
The ESC has 300 members in eastern India and 2,300 across the country.
The council has also planned a set of incubation centres in the US. One in Montgomery is scheduled to open during June-July while another in the East Coast will start operation from end of this year. Two more centres are likely to come up at New York and San Francisco. The “nitty-gritty of those projects” are being worked out, he said.
Radhakrishnan added that to beat the problem of rupee appreciation, the ESC has set up a sovereign fund with $5 billion corpus to help all the companies irrespective of their size.
Total export of electronics and software during 2006-07 stood at Rs.36.25 billion ($906.3 million).