According to the Office of the Government CIO (OGCIO), the government will take applications from June 25, 2012 to Mar 31, 2016 for the two measures --the exemption of waiver fee for changing parts of an eligible industrial building into datacenter use and premium assessment for the lease modification on the basis of high-tier datacenter use for the datacenter part of a proposed project.

"The government will exempt the waiver fee now chargeable according to standard rates for using existing industrial buildings for IT and telecoms industries that include datacenter business," said the government CIO Daniel Lai when explaining the waiver fee exemption.

The regular waiver fee -- varying with locations -- is HK$45 per square meter annually or HK$69 per square meter annually, according to the Lands Department.

This measure applies to datacenters of all tiers, while the industrial building concerned must be in a zone designated for "industrial", "other specified uses annotated 'business'" or "commercial" use, and aged 15 years or above, the government noted.

For the other measure, the datacenter part of a proposed project has to be at least 40% of the maximum development intensity allowed for a site or a plot ratio of 2.5, whichever is higher. This particular measure -- irrespective of zoning --applies to both high-tier datacenter only projects and mix-purpose projects where a datacenter isn't the only facility.