Speaking to media persons at the foundation stone-laying ceremony of Pune Infotech Park at Hinjavadi on Friday, Dake said the proposal was being discussed at the Cabinet level and a final decision will be taken soon.Dake said the work on establishing the five-star infrastructure at the park, being developed by Maharashtra Industrial Development Corporation (MIDC), will begin shortly to make the park operational in a year.

Dake said around Rs 1000 crore worth exports are expected from the Pune region after the park is totally operational by year 2000. This year, Pune companies are expected to cross Rs 500 crore in exports.

Infosys Technologies, Wipro Ltd, Datamatics, Mahindra British Telecom and KPIT Systems will be among the 17 firms to start operations at the park. Infosys and Wipro will becomeoperational by the end of next year.

State Chief Secretary P Subrahamanyan said that State has decided to develop the Mumbai-Pune belt as the information technology corridor, the connectivity will be provided in the entire strip between Navi Mumbai and Hinjavadi by laying optic fibres along the highway, he said.

MIDC will be investing around Rs 30 crore in developing the infrastructure for the park. The industry, on the other hand, would be channelising Rs 104 crore in investments in the initial phase.

The park is spread over an area of 76.71 hectares of land. Out of this 48.52 is plotable land from which a major share of 36.09 hectares has been alloted to Wipro (10 hectares) and Infosys (8 hectares). The STP, Pune has also taken a plot at the park for providing earth station for exporting software and render necessary support for the software exporters.

Similarly, the optic fibre network around the city of Pune is being provided by the Department of Telecommunications and Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limitedto enable every software unit working in and around the park to avail of necessary communication facilities for their ease of operation.

MIDC will also be constructing a 20,000 sq ft building to offer office space to smaller IT companies. It will have an business incubation centre to nurture first generation entrepreneurs.

Subrahmanyam said on lines of Pune, small infotech parks will be set up in Nagpur and Auruganbad too.