|
The report estimated India will need over 1.4 million IT programmers by 2005, but said the total combined figure of available workers at the time is likely to be closer to 875,000.
India's IT training institutes were also shown to be buckling under the growing number of entrants. Training costs, usually between $15,000-$20,000, are also high and only add to India's losses if workers emigrate to the West after it has educated them.
Despite its findings that India cannot keep up with demand for its services and skills, the report showed IT had transformed some areas of the country, identifying Bangalore as one of a growing number of 'world class technology hubs' that had emerged to compete with Silicon Valley and other IT hotspots in Europe and Japan.
According to the report, (and if India can find the staff) its IT services exports will reach $28-30 billion by 2008; IT enabled services (ITES) will reach US$21-24 billion; its products and technology services industry will reach $8-10 billion and the domestic software market will generate $13-15 billion.
Mr Kiran Karnik, President of NASSCOM, said: "Despite the challenges facing the sector, we are optimistic about the long term potential of the IT industry. We believe that four powerful forces (exports, ITES, services and domestic software) will continue to drive it. For one, a large mass of untapped potential blockbuster customers are set to take off. Furthermore, India has achieved the familiarity and experience with offshoring and this is dramatically increasing the breadth of service lines. Significant under-penetrated segments exist at both country and industry levels and there is pressure on global majors to move a significant portion of their work to India."
--
Richard Powell, © Shout99.com 2002
|
