With Bengal aspiring to be one of the top three IT destinations in the country by 2010, contributing 15-20 per cent of India’s IT exports, the budget has been a real damper.

At a recent meeting in the city, state IT minister Debesh Das said the STPI scheme, which provides for special fiscal incentives, single-window clearance facilities and other sops for IT companies setting up base in these STPIs, should be extended beyond the original date of 2009, till 2020.

But even as the state minister’s request fell on deaf ears as far as the latest Union Budget is concerned, the state IT industry might now need to look at alternative ways of achieving the ambitious targets it has set itself.

IT exports from West Bengal in 2006-07 touched Rs 3,600 crore, out of which as much as Rs 3,100 crore came from companies that worked out of STPIs in the state. The state IT department expects IT exports from the state to register a growth of 40-45 per cent by the end of the current fiscal (2007-08). According to data available at the STPI Kolkata website, there are roughly 212 IT companies registered under the scheme.

It is being expected the Centre might consider replacing the existing STPI scheme with the new SEZ policy, which is likely to have its own set of incentives, but remain heavy on the pockets of smaller IT players, like start-up entrepreneurs who have played a major role in shaping the images of cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad as IT hotspots.

“If the STPI scheme is not extended then it would spell trouble for small and medium IT entrepreneurs in the state. Such entities do not have deep pockets and many might not be able to make the kind of investments required to set up shop in SEZs,” said Kalyan Kar, the director of Acclaris Business Solutions Pvt Ltd, an IT firm that operates out of the STPI in Salt Lake, sector V.

Kar said the IT industry in Bengal, as well as the rest of the country, was hoping the apex body of IT and software companies, Nasscom, is going to lobby on its behalf with the Centre for the extension of the policy. “But if the policy were not to be extended it would definitely be a blow,” Kar said.