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UNCTAD Director's pat for Indian software surge

N. Rahul

Says the industry has picked up fast after dotcom bubble burst

HYDERABABAD: The Director of United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Lakshmi Puri, sees a good future for Indian software exports, which doubled last year.

The exports went up from $25 billion in 2003-04 to $51 billion in 2004-05, mainly due to upward movement in value change of the industry. Earlier, the Indian software companies were focussed on low-end work but now even small companies got involved in high-end services, Ms. Puri, who is a former Indian ambassador to Hungary, told The Hindu here.

BPO show

She said there was some recession in Indian software potential overseas because of the dotcom bubble burst, but things looked up after that. Indian companies were doing well both in business process outsourcing (BPO) and physical delivery of services by cross-border movement of engineers.

Ms. Puri said the country had reached a stage where it was perceived as the fastest growing and largest market in the world in terms of goods and services. It had a huge internal market but unlike Japan, China and Korea, the policies of the Government were not of trade-led growth in the past. This was why the country's trade had not even reached one per cent of world trade, which was $8.33 trillion in 2004.

Good `service'

Nonetheless, India was an emerging powerhouse, particularly in service sector. It ranked among the top 20 service exporters and top five developing countries in the field. It was also a strong performer in textiles. The textile industry was optimistic that it could make exports worth $25 billion up to 2008 but this called for a lot of investment. She also said that the country was not big enough in exports of electronics in which ASEAN countries were doing well. She said that Indian industry was not much focussed on exports earlier. There was a sea change now. India could gain $40 to 60 billion in exports and welfare following liberalisation of movement of temporary workers in service sector of developed countries, she added.

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