Tool for National Development
Somesh.K.Mathur1
Abstract
India 's software and services exports have been rising rapidly. The annual growth rate ranges between 20 -22% in IT services and nearly 55 % in IT-enabled services (ITES), such as call centres, Business Process Outsourcing ( BPO) and other administrative support operations. Together they are predicted to grow at 25% pa till 2010.The IT industry is highly export oriented and the exporters are predominantly Indian. The Indian
BPOs (ITES) are moving up the value chain, handling high end data for airline information, insurance, banking sector and mortgage companies, enterprise resource planning, among others. Some of the companies have already moved into significantly higher value added segments such as mission- critical applications, development and support, product design, HR Management, knowledge process outsourcing for pharmaceutical companies and large complex projects.
Software exports make up 20 % of India 's total export revenue in 2003-04, up from 4.9 % in 1997.This figure is expected to go up to 44% of annual exports by 2010. Though India accounts for just about 3 % of the world market for information technology services, this sector has been growing at a scorching pace, helped by a large pool of English-speaking workers, nearly 2 million engineers and the increasing tribe of tech-savvy entrepreneurs in the country.
The Information Technology industry currently accounts for almost 4.8 % of India 's
GDP. It will account for 7 % of India 's GDP by 2010.
Software and IT enabled services have emerged as a niche sector for India. This was one of the fastest growing sectors in the last decade with a compound annual growth rate exceeding 50 per cent. Software service exports increased from US $ 0.50 million in
1990 to $5.9 billion in 2000-01 to 23.6 billion dollars in 2005-06 recording a 34% growth. A compound annual growth of over 25% per
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