US financial crisis may hit India's exports in Q4: Deloitte

NEW DELHI: Country's exports, including BPO services, software and financial services
exports, are likely to be hit by the global meltdown in the fourth quarter of 2008, says a report by global research firm Deloitte. "The ongoing slowdown in the US economy will likely to affect the future growth in India's exports. Experts predict that US businesses would likely either reduce outsourcing or withhold expansion plans," the report Deloitte Global Economic Outlook for the fourth quarter of this year said. Consequently, as a result of the financial crisis, the BPOs, financial services and other software exports contributing to about 2 per cent of India's GDP are likely to be affected, the report said. Software industry body NASSCOM has also predicted that there would be a significant impact of the global crisis on the Indian BPO sector. The financial turmoil and recessionary tendencies in major economies have already impacted India's export growth, which slowed to 10.4 per cent in September even as the country increased its imports by 43.3 per cent over September 2007.

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RBI's hands-off strategy irks IT industry

India's IT industry, the flag bearer of a resurgent economy, wants the government to step in and check the rupee's unprecedented rise to nine-year highs in an effort to protect their earnings.

The rupee has gained almost 10 per cent this year and 14 per cent over the past 12 months against the dollar, denting the earnings of an industry that gets two-thirds of its 50 billion dollars in annual revenue from the US.

"It's not a market driven by market forces alone," said Kiran Karnik, president of the National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), in an interview here. "These are not normal times."

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Karnik to exit Nasscom

NEW DELHI: Raw treatment meted out to Indian information technology sector by Union Finance minister P Chidambaram in his Annual Budget 2007 seems to have taken a toll upon the main lobbying body for Indian software, Nasscom with its president Kiran Karnik bowing out of office.

The decision, formally announced by Nasscom on Thursday, confirmed what was being talked about in hushed tones by the industry captains for the past few weeks.

In a terse statement, Nasscom said it had appointed search firm Korn Ferry to look for Karnik’s successor in consultation with him and key organisation members. This, it said, was part of the mission to “institutionalize” Nasscom through appropriate structures, systems and processes “for which well-defined HR policies had been laid down”.

Read more at Economic Times