Dubai, June 1: Dubai has announced plans to set up a $46 million purpose-built commercial centre for information technology (IT) companies - the first of its kind in the West Asia.

To be known as the `millennium tower', it is expected to boost Dubai's position as a regional information technology centre and as one of the modern information technology hubs in the world.

The centre is the first project being taken up by Emaar Properties, a $273 million real estate company launched by the Dubai government with equity participation by United Arab Emirates (UAE) nationals.

The project will come up adjacent to the Dubai World Trade Centre, one of the tallest buildings in the entire region.

The proposed project is expected to be ready in two years. The centre has been dubbed as the `smart' IT mall designed for it people by the information technology people.

``It will be equipped with superior telecom links, broad bandwidth, networking, high speed internet access, smart applications and all comforts of class A office structures'', Mohammed Alabbar, chairman of the Emaar founding committee, told reporters.

The high-rise building will have 3,00,000 square feet of commercial leasing space but it has attracted so much interest that Emaar is already thinking in terms of an equally large second phase.

The region's information technology business is estimated to be worth 1.5 billion dollars annually.

" With global web commerce expected to soar to six billion dollars by the year 2000, Dubai has to get into position to capture its share'', Alabbar, who is also the director-general of Dubai's economic department, said.Abdul Aziz Al Ghurair, a member of the committee, said the region would see major investments in the telecommunications sector in the coming years. He said the Emirates Telecommunication Corporation had planned investments of around $1 billion over the next three years while the Gulf states would spend between $8-10 billion in this period.

Firms which hire space in the tower would be provided with fully wired commercial offices and common resources for video conferencing, multi-media presentations, broadcasting, maintenance and upgrading.

The building will have the region's first `electronic business village of the future' where people can visit virtual storefronts or kiosks and interact with technology applications.

``Project millennium is a smart building -- fully wired to meet the exacting demands of it companies, plugging resident companies into the world through the most advanced telecommunication facilities in the region'', the director-general of Dubai's economic department said.

Ghurair said the project would create a centre of IT excellence.``We expect residents from a wide range of it sectors—players in open network computing, communication, internet, distance learning, multimedia, consulting, telephone firms, electronic publishing and edutainment organisations'', he added.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.