PROVIDENCE — Hoping to bolster salaries in Rhode Island, the state Economic Development Corporation is promoting a new tax incentive for companies in several high-wage industries, including information technology and biotechnology.

The tax credit offers up to $100,000 to reward investments in so-called innovation-based industries.

In addition to biotech and IT, the sectors include: financial services; marine and defense manufacturing; professional, technical and educational services; and industrial and consumer product manufacturing and design.

“We’re trying to attract and keep serial entrepreneurs in the state,” Saul Kaplan, the executive director of the EDC, said in an interview yesterday. “We need more of them in Rhode Island.”

The tax credit reimburses an investor or a company’s senior management for half of any investment made in the firm, up to $100,000. The credits will be applied toward state income-tax bills.

The EDC is authorized to distribute $2 million in tax credits every two years until 2016, when the program will expire.

Rhode Island has seen steady employment growth, adding 800 jobs last month and reducing unemployment to 4.7 percent. But salaries remain below the national average, and the state consistently trails Massachusetts, which has established one of the country’s largest concentrations of biotechnology firms.

The tax credit was first proposed last year by the Rhode Island Science and Technology Advisory Council.

State Sen. William A. Walaska, D-Warwick, and House Majority Leader Gordon D. Fox, D-Providence, sponsored legislation creating the incentive. It was approved during last year’s legislative session.

The legislation authorized the EDC to select the industries that would benefit and establish rules for judging applications. It completed that process last month, according to Melissa L. Withers, an EDC spokeswoman.

The EDC formally announced the tax credit on June 30, and it has been soliciting applications. The Slater Fund, a taxpayer-backed organization that supports start-up companies, is also promoting the program.

“We have a lot of promising leads,” Withers said. “We’re just beginning.”

The EDC failed to persuade lawmakers this year to include several of its priorities in the state budget, including support for borrowing $28.5 million to finance a statewide wireless network, and the allocation of $600,000 for the construction of an information technology and digital media center to help entrepreneurs.

(In a brief interview Thursday, Governor Carcieri said he would find other ways to promote those initiatives. “It was disappointing,” he said of the budget vote. “Those are good things.”)

Various tax credits have come under fire recently by antipoverty advocates fighting cuts to social services. But the governor has resisted attempts to gut the programs, arguing that job creation is needed to boost the state’s tax revenue.

“I think it’s a vote of confidence for the innovation agenda,” Kaplan said of the new tax credit. “It demonstrates that, while we have a very difficult budget, we can make some very focused, smart choices that can really make a difference.”

The EDC recently announced plans to evaluate all of its existing business incentives, appointing J. Michael Saul as managing director of finance programs.

Saul has also been asked to help promote the incentives, while researching ways to alter the programs.

“Many of Rhode Island’s current financing programs are outdated and reflect old assumptions about what a business needs to grow,” he said in a statement.

For the Innovation Tax Credit, an EDC committee will evaluate applications based on a company’s business plan and financial statements, Kaplan said. All requests must be approved by the EDC board.

To be eligible for the new tax credit, a company must have annual gross revenues of less than $1 million during the past two years.

“It’s a way to strengthen our platform for new-company creation,” Kaplan said.

“We need more entrepreneurs who have a track record of success for building new high-tech companies.”

bgedan@projo.com