Globalization is a positive force: Kiran Karnik

Delivering the keynote address at the first Asia Tech Summit,
Kiran Karnik, President, NASSCOM said that globalization is a positive force
that has helped India better its economic conditions at a time when globally
there was a crunch situation.

"Globalization has helped India achieve tremendous
growth even in hard times and make its mark on the world software map. For the
past two years, India has experienced a growth rate of over 30 percent in terms
of software exports. This signifies the value that India advantage brings to the
table for global MNCs. India together with China, is con-stituting a powerhouse
that is continuously moving Asia forward on the forefront of IT," he added.

Emphasizing the need for US companies to continuously look
for outsourcing, Karnik said that there are a lot issues like–cost, time to
market, quality and overall value invol-ved with outsourcing. "US com-panies
will continue to look forward to cutting on costs which in turn would provide
India opportunities to better position itself as a quality destination for
outsourcing for global players," he added.

Speaking at the summit, Robert O Blake, Jr, Charged Aff-air,
US Embassy, identified three areas where forward thinking government policies
can stimu-late the IT sector even further. A strong intellectual property regime
providing reduced and simplified tariffs and taxes on IT products and services
and enhancing government policies that supports the establish-ment of better
infrastructure.

Talking about the outsour-cing of IT projects to countries like India, he
said that compa-nies in the US and other develo-ped countries, seek to cut costs
to remain competitive. "Digiti-zation, high-speed data trans-mission and
the Internet infra-structure have made possible the outsourcing of different
services to countries like India, Philippines, Ireland and China," he
added.

CyberMedia News Service

New Delhi