Indian software boom on track: Karnik

BANGALORE: India's software exports are on track to grow by 30 percent in the year to March 2005, despite attempts in the key U.S. market to discourage outsourcing and protect jobs, said the industry's head.

India's information technology (IT) sector and business process outsourcing (BPO) industries, which offer back office and call center services, logged exports worth $12.5 billion in the 2003-2004 fiscal year.

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

"We made a projection of 30 to 32 percent (growth) for the fiscal year combining IT and BPO. We are comfortable with that," said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM).

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

Karnik, who was speaking on the margins of a software conference, said 120 bills in various U.S. provinces had directly or indirectly attempted to check outsourcing but U.S. unemployment data showed there was no cause for alarm.

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

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

"It (the controversy) has not gone away, and it is not moving away," he said.