KOLKATA, INDIA: Signs of recovery in the United States were yet to translate into real business growth for India's outsourcing firms, but a pick-up is expected, the head of the leading software industry association said on Tuesday.

"We are yet to see an increase in IT spend," Som Mittal, president of National Association of Software and Services Companies, told reporters at an industry conference.

"We expect business to pick up from the second half of the year."

India's fiscal year runs from April to March.

Indian software firms are looking to expand in markets such as Asia-Pacific and Europe to cut their dependence on the U.S. market, which brings in more than half the sector's $60 billion revenues but has been badly hit by economic and market turmoil.

Research firm Gartner said in a recent report that while overall IT budgets were expected to fall 3.1 percent in 2010, in Asia-Pacific companies planned to raise their software budgets by 4.4 percent on average.