Narayana Murthy pushes for increased domestic IT spending

Bangalore, Aug 18 (UNI) India needs to triple its investment in Information Technology spending, if it has to accelerate its growth, IT bellwether Infosys Chairman and Chief Mentor N R Narayana Murthy has opined.

In an interview to UNI, Mr Murthy, who would be retiring on August 20, said ''by all counts, the investment in IT in India, both in private and public sector, is a small fraction of that in developed countries, where the investment can be anywhere between 2.5 and four per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, the domestic IT market in India is somewhere around US Dollars nine to ten billion, which worked out to just 1.5 per cent of the GDP.'' ''We have to triple our investment in it if we want to accelerate our growth,'' he emphasised.

Mr Murthy said ''Indian companies have to become more and more competitive on a global scale. We must realise the importance of IT in gaining competitive advantage.'' Companies should also realise the importance of doing fixed price projects, thereby allocating enough resources from their side.

The onus was on the top management of corporations, he added.

Referring to IT exports from the country, he said the country had drawn the attention of the world as a customised software destination. Never before in the history of the country had any industry created such a large workforce as the IT sector had done.

However, the country was still in the nascent stage in software exports when compared to the huge global outsourcing market, he added.

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