IT Ministry in talks with Commerce Ministry to ramp up hardware sec

New Delhi, Sep 7 (UNI) The Information Technology (IT) Ministry today said it is in talks with the Commerce Ministry to incentivise the growth of the hardware sector, currently contributing a mere 1.7 per cent to the GDP of India.

''We had a meeting with the Commerce Secretary S S Menon yesterday, and are hopeful of getting more incentives to ramp up the hardware sector,'' IT Secretary Jainder Singh told reporters here on the sidelines of the Electronics and Computer Software Export Promotion Council Awards.

While the software industry is presently growing at 28 per cent, the hardware sector has registered a mere 12 plus per cent growth in the last five years, he said.

''We are talking with various ministries whose inputs will be taken into account to leverage the hardware sector which has immense scope for an increase in production. By 2015, the consumption of electronics in India is touted at 363 billion dollars, of which domestic production will be 155 billion dollars,'' the IT sources said.

He further said that at present, 50 per cent of the IT requirement in the country is through exports. ''What India needs in terms of IT exports is new frontiers of technology and the right kind of ways to market the Indian industry abroad.'' The secretary said that the IT industry has been contributing in strengthening the economic standard of the country in recent times. '' In 2004-05, the IT industry contributed 25 per cent of India's total exports, a number that is expected to touch a 35 per cent growth by the year 2008.

He added that while in 2004-05, the IT industry's contibution to GDP was 4.1 per cent, the year 2008 will see a 7 per cent contribution from it to the GDP of the country.

He attributed the slack growth in the hardware sectors to ''infrastructure, cost of finances and different economies of scale.'' One of the factors that required consideration was the training of engineers which could be done only with the help of the industry.

He suggested a three-pronged strategy to go about training of engineers ''NIIT be made centres of excellence for training ngineers, engineering colleges be selected with the help of AICD for training and better teaching in the Engligh language.'' UNI RA PKS DB1131