India’s software exports to zoom: Nasscom

NEW DELHI: India's software association forecast on Tuesday a jump in

software exports this financial year and a sustained rise in the next despite a

slowing of the US economy.

Dewang Mehta, president of the National Association of Software and Service

Companies (Nasscom) told a news conference that software exports were expected

to total $6.2 billion in 2000-01 (April-March) and reach about $9.5 billion the

next year.

"India has a tremendous cost and quality advantage," Mehta said.

Indian software exports crossed $4.0 billion in 1999-2000.

The country's information technology services sector has been expanding at a

scorching pace in a global boom with revenues climbing more than 50 per cent a

year in recent years.

Some analysts have expressed concerns that the slowing US economy would hurt

its growth.

Talk of a slowdown in the United States led to a sectoral downgrade of

India's information technology sector to "neutral" by Credit Suisse

First Boston last week. Software stocks took a knock as a result.

"Let me reassure you that there is no slowdown. On the contrary, there

is an acceleration of outsourcing orders coming to us....Cost-cutting means more

outsourcing," Mehta said.

Nasscom has nearly 800 members, up from 585 at the end of March 2000.

Mehta said the industry had earlier forecast an export figure of $6.3 billion

for the current fiscal. The marginal downward revision of the estimate to $6.2

billion reflected not a slowdown but a change in line with foreign exchange rate

adjustments made to export figures given in rupees by Nasscom members, he said.

In line with Nasscom's estimates, one of the nation's leading software

companies, Polaris Software Lab Ltd., said it was confident of good growth

despite a slump in the fortunes of US technology and Internet stocks.

"Dotcom failures are of course there in the US and they have surely had

some impact on sentiment but for us nothing has changed and for the year to

March 2002 we should grow (revenues) at about 70 per cent," the firm's

chairman Arun Jain told Reuters in an interview.

(C) Reuters Limited 2001.