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IT and BPO to grow 30 per cent in India
Exports market booming

By Reuters

Published: Tuesday 14 September 2004

India's software exports are on track to grow by 30 per cent in the 2004-2005 fiscal year, despite attempts in the key US market to discourage outsourcing and protect jobs, the industry's head said on Monday.

India's IT sector and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries, which offer back office and call centre services, logged exports worth $12.5bn in the 2003-2004 fiscal year that ended in March.

Nearly 25 per cent of the exports that involved 800,000 workers come from the top three companies in the sector: Tata Consultancy Services, Infosys Technologies and Wipro Technologies.

"We made a projection of 30 to 32 per cent [growth] for the fiscal year combining IT and BPO. We are comfortable with that," Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies, told reporters.

Outsourcing has been an issue in the campaign for US presidential elections this year, prompting concerns in India of a protectionist backlash that could hamper trade in services.

Karnik, who was speaking on the sidelines at a software conference, said 120 bills in various US governments had directly or indirectly attempted to check outsourcing.

"Not a single law has so far actually constrained moving work" to offshore centres, Karnik said.

Demand is robust but India's booming outsourcing industry cannot afford to ignore that moving work to low-cost centres like India could result in an erosion of jobs in the West, Karnik said.

The controversy "has not gone away, and it is not moving away", he said.