Suframa to invest US$931k in software pole

Brazil's Manaus free trade zone management company Suframa plans to invest 2.7mn reais (US$931,000) this year to build infrastructure, train employees and market the concept of a software development center in the city, Suframa said in a statement. Suframa, controlled by the development, industry and trade ministry (MDIC), is seeking funding from the science and technology ministry (MCT) through resources available from the IT Law. The technology center, called Amazonsoft, already has an incubator, CIDE, which hosts 11 software companies researching into products for budget planning, network security, industrial automation and biodiversity. The start-ups have three years in which to establish themselves and move out of the incubator. Suframa runs the successful free trade zone, Zona Franca de Manaus (ZFM), which has attracted a wide range of electronics companies to the city in the heart of the Amazon offering significant tax breaks. The software center would not just be an evolution of this strategy, but might also be able to feed into the existing industries, providing, say, software for mobile handsets built locally. "If the local industry does not position itself in [the software] market, industries from other parts of the country, and even other countries, will become the main suppliers of software products and services for the local market, leading to a loss of jobs and income in the Amazon region," Amazonsoft manager José Cardoso Filho said in the statement.