NASSCOM has urged the government to not restrict data centre fiscal incentives to investments made only in the proposed ‘Data Centre Economic Zones’.
In November 2020, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had released a draft Data Centre Policy and invited comments on the same. According to the policy, data centre incentivisation scheme (DCIS) will be formulated by the government of India, which would specify the intended beneficiaries, applicability criteria and fiscal and non-fiscal incentives for the sector.
Further, it has also suggested that the incentives must not be tied to any other location-based criteria.
According to the industry body, there should be a broad range of standards for data centres to choose from based on customer requirements. Besides, NASSCOM also urged MeitY to work with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) to enable policies that would provide new optic fibre cable entrants (non-carriers) or third parties, access to public rights of way in municipalities and rural areas.
NASSCOM also asked the government to consult industry players before finalising on a testing and certification framework. Further, it suggested that global standards be employed to the testing framework rather than separate domestic ones.
