NASSCOM: Growth of Indian IT sector may dip in 2008-09

The Indian IT industry, which has been clocking impressive growth rate in recent years, is likely to see a slow-down in the next fiscal due to competition from China, Philippines and Sri Lanka, industry body The National Association of Software and Service Companies of India (NASSCOM) said on Sunday.
The growth rate might come down by six percentage points due to the competition, as well as economic uncertainty and lesser IT spends by the United States, NASSCOM President Som Mittal said.
"A recent survey by NASSCOM revealed the industry grew by 28 to29 percent in the last few years but our forecast is that it will go down to 22 to 24 percent," he said when releasing the survey earlier this week.
However, it would not have any impact on the long-term prospects of the sector which is set to cross 60 billion U.S. dollars this year, the survey said.
The survey, titled "FY08 Revenue performance and FY09 forecast for the Indian IT software and services sector", said Indian IT-BPO industry, including domestic companies, recorded an overall growth of 28 percent, clocking revenues of 52 billion U.S. Dollars in 2007-08 up from 39.6 billion U.S. Dollars in 2006-07.
The Inian software and services exports segment grew by 29 percent to register revenues of 40.4 billion U.S. Dollars in 2007-08, up from 31.4 billion U.S. Dollars in 2006-07.
Source:Xinhua