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India's outsourcing industry faces challenge

AFP, Bombay
Emerging nations in Southeast Asia and central Europe could eat up 45 percent of India's share of the booming outsourcing market as the sector failed to draft a longterm strategy to stay ahead, a top global IT consultancy says.
Offshore business process outsourcing (BPO) earned India an estimated 2.3 billion dollars in 2003, representing a more than 80 percent share of the global market, according to US-based Gartner.
"We're saying India would stand to lose 45 percent of that 80 percent share by 2007. India will have a 55 percent market share while other countries will have about 45 percent, " Gartner research director Sujoy Chohan said.
The government and the industry had "suffered from the erroneous belief" the sector could match booming growth of its software and other main-
stream information technology activities without devising a longterm roadmap to do so, he said.
"India as a nation has been complacent," he told AFP in an interview earlier this week.
Revenues at India's outsourcing firms, which provide such services as call centres, insurance processing and credit card billing, have rocketed in recent years.
US and other firms have made a beeline for India, drawn by its vast educated English-speaking workforce and labour costs much lower than in the West.
But what India has failed to realise is that outsourcing "can be delivered by any graduate without the technical skills needed for information technology," Chohan said.
"A lot of emerging countries have English-speaking graduates."
Unlike other emerging nations such
as Thailand, Malaysia, Fiji, Mauritius, the Czech Republic, Poland and South Africa, India has failed to draft a longterm plan to train workers for the industry.
"Philippines has put into place a strategic roadmap for attracting foreign direct investment in business process outsourcing. Does India have one? It needs a long-term strategy like that," he said.
Chohan said the Indian government needed to ensure schools and colleges offered skills that would allow them to be employed in the outsourcing industry, while other smaller countries were taking huge strides.
He said New Delhi needed to sit down with outsourcing corporate leaders to identify specific skills required for the industry and design curriculums accordingly.
sent thru’ banks
BSS, Dhaka
The government has not imposed any flood surcharge on remittances being sent through banking channels and it has no plan to do so in future.
According to an official handout issued here yesterday, a vested quarter is spreading rumour in Saudi Arabia that the government has imposed 10 percent flood surcharge or charge on the remittances being sent by the Bangladeshis working in the Middle East .
"The government continues its service in reaching the remitted money to the relatives of the nonresident Bangladeshis (NRBs) within 24 hours in urban areas and within three days in rural areas," it said.
"The incentives provided to the NRBs for sending remittances through banking channels will continue," the handout said adding, "sending remittances through banking channels is always safe, profitable and simple."
It said the foreign currency sent by the NRBs through the banking channels was largely contributing to the country's economic growth. "A group of people involved in 'hundi' business and money laundering are spreading this rumour among the NRBs," it said .
The government suggested the Bangladeshis working abroad including Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries not to be misled by this rumour and urged them to continue their efforts for the development of the county's economy.
Date show
from Sept 5
UNB, Dhaka
A two-day exhibition of Pakistani dates, organised by Pakistan Export Promotion Bureau, will begin at Sheraton Hotel here on September 5.
The aim of the exhibition is to popularise Pakistani dates ahead of Ramadan. Seventeen date export organisations of Pakistan will take part in the two-day exhibition.
Pakistan is among the five major date-producing countries in the world and its annual production is over 6 lakh tons.
The exhibition will remain open to all from 11am to 8pm everyday.
Singapore July factory output up 19pc
AFP, Singapore
Singapore's industrial production in July rose 19 percent from a year ago on solid contributions from the electronics sector and transport engineering, the government said Thursday.
Last month's industrial scorecard was within market forecast for a 17.021.5 percent increase and little changed from the 19.2 percent jump in output recorded in June.
Electronics, the backbone of Singapore's manufacturing activity, posted the biggest production rise of 30.9 percent in July, the Economic Development Board (EDB) said.
This was followed by transport engineering which grew 28.9 percent; bio-medicals 20.9 percent; precision engineering 13.6 percent; chemicals 4.0 percent and general manufacturing industries 1.0 percent.