Colombia. The Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies, MinTIC, through the Program for the Strengthening of the Information Technology Industry (FITI), opened on November 29 a call through which it seeks to encourage the development of innovative IT proposals in the regions of Colombia.
The call is aimed at companies in the IT industry, anchor organizations (private company) and universities or technological development centers. These organizations must form a regional associative model (cluster), which will be responsible for executing the project that is benefited.
This strategy, for which the MINISTRY of ICT and Colciencias allocated 7,000 million pesos (about US$2.3 million), promotes the development of IT projects that respond to the needs of seven regions of the country in sectors such as: agribusiness, logistics and transport, health, tourism, agriculture or mining, among others. The regions that will benefit from the call are: Bogotá and Cundinamarca, Antioquia, Pacific region, Caribbean region, Los Santanderes, Coffee region and other regions.
The regions and focuses of specialization of the call are the following:
Bogotá and Cundinamarca: Information Technologies (IT), for the banking and financial services sector.
Antioquia: Information Technologies (IT), for the electric power sector and related services.
Pacific Region (Valle del Cauca and Cauca): Information Technologies (IT), for the agribusiness sector.
Caribbean Region (Atlántico, Bolívar, Magdalena, Córdoba, Sucre, Guajira, Cesar, San Andrés Islas): Information Technologies (IT), for the logistics and transport sector.
Santanderes (Santander and Norte de Santander): Information Technology (IT), for the hydrocarbons and mining sector.
Coffee Region (Caldas, Quindío and Risaralda): Information Technologies (IT), for the agricultural sector, through bioinformatics and computational biology.
Other regions, in the transversal national focuses, Information Technologies (IT) in the health, tourism, agriculture, defense and government sectors.
According to the conditions of the call, the project that is chosen will receive resources of up to 1,000 million pesos. For its part, the Strategic Alliance must provide a counterpart of 50 percent of the requested value, which can be contributed 50 percent in cash, 50 percent in kind.
The closing of the call will be on March 29, 2016 and on May 13 the publication of the Bank of Eligible will be made.
The Program for the Strengthening of the Information Technology Industry of Colombia - FITI, of the Ministry of Information and Communications Technologies - MinTIC, contemplates as one of its lines of action, the promotion of the specialization of the it industry of the country, seeking to generate alternatives different from the classic business model of "Custom Software Development", to move to the consolidation of portfolios with high added value that provide solutions to specific sectors.
