Dismissing reports that government proposed to divest stake in STPI, secretary in the ministry of information technology (MIT) P V Jayakrishnan said, "STPI is a society and the government holds no equity stake in it."

"However, we are considering corporatisation of STPI" on the basis of the recommendations of Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services (Il&FS), which submitted a report to government recently on organisational changes in STPI, he said.

Earlier, STPI director V B Taneja had said total government control of STPI was hindering the beleaguered organisation's attempts to mop up much-needed funds for expansion as well as aiding loss of talented manpower."Under government ownership, mopping up funds needed for expansion is difficult," Taneja said.

These include setting up of five new earth stations in the year 2000 besides investing in new schemes for the existing 17 units, he said.

"Manpower is a major constraint for the organisation. Government salary structures do not attract talented manpower to stpi and we suffer due to this,"Taneja added. "Corporatisation will give operational flexibility to STPI," director general of STPI Subir Hari Singh told PTI, adding that the process would bring STPI under the ambit of the Company Law. The IL&FS recommendations were at present under condsideration of the governing council within STPI and once the council ratified this proposal, the government would take a final decision, Singh said.

Ministry plans 8-yr strategy for software exports target
The ministry of information technology plans to formulate an eight-year strategy which will lay down steps to be taken annually to reach the $50 billion software export target by 2008.

The plan will set a roadmap to achieve 40 per cent cumulative annual growth rate for IT sector to enable the country achieve $87 billion software revenues by 2008, Union minister for information & technology Pramod Mahajan, said on Monday. Software industry is expected to garner $4 billion in export revenues for the year 1999-2000.

Apart from the task force, the Mckinsey-Nasscom report had stated that India could achieve a total of about $90 billion revenues from software including $50 billion from exports.

Inaugurating the Electronics and Information Technology Exposition-Elitex 2000-organised by the ministry here, Mahajan said "at the end of every year, the government will assess the progress of software and hardware in achieving the targets. We will not leave it to the markets for achieving the target'', he added. Mahajan stated India needed to emphasise on speedy decision-making, an enabling infrastructure and it education to meet the intended revenue targets.

--UNI