SME Times News Bureau | 01 Aug, 2009
"Services Sector has given face to 'Brand India' that resiliently launched India on the growth trajectory," said Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of State for Commerce & Industry.

Scindia stated this at the valedictory session of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) National Conference on "Services Export", held in New Delhi on Friday.

He added that Government & Industry as common stakeholders should make India the No 1 country in services export.

He added that the bouquet of services needed to be re-engineered, widened, made more comprehensive and deep to invoke large share of the global services market, which is currently 106 billion dollars. He also advocated the need to asses the demand potential of each service vertical and the matching skills requirement for creating and enhancing the employability of manpower.

Scindia said that Indian IT sector has done well in tough times not only with cost arbitrage and talent pool but also by building a globalised value chain. Similarly, automotive, hi-tech and engineering sectors are constantly moving up the value chain, which will pay rich dividends and help recuperate from the recession.

Scindia informed that 2.5 billion tourists came to India last year and as the ratio of direct to indirect employment in tourism sector is as high as 1:8. Therefore, we must explore all opportunities to grow tourism including medical tourism.

Vinayak Chatterjee, Chairman, CII Infrastructure Council and Chairman, Feedback Ventures Pvt Ltd in his welcome remarks said that challenges that may come up in the internationalizing of India’s service sector include non-tariff barriers, visa issues, educational qualifications and accordingly requested Government to ensure that these are not imposed as that will become barrier for services exports.

He suggested that Government may use aggressive economic diplomacy by increasing the basket of services that needs to be broadened, provide confidence to domestic market players to bid for foreign ventures and more importantly remove the non-tariff and other hidden barriers.

Malvinder Singh, Group Chairman, Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises highlighted the huge untapped potential of India’s services sector including healthcare that itself is broad based touching paramedical, medical tourism, medicine education, telemedicine, KPO, tele-radiology, pathology, nursing etc.

P Rajendran, COO, NIIT Ltd said that while leveraging the base of the pyramid of IT service, we need to look to broaden the tip of the pyramid by creating conducive environment for Intellectual property (IP) creation.

He commented that BPO is no more only an IT services but has proliferated into all other verticals enhancing their own value and reach. He also said that Business Process Outsourcing has opened up the meaning of globalization and now other services are also being served from India.

While thanking Jyotiraditya Scindia, Minister of State for Commerce & Industry, the Director General of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Chandrajit Banerjee complimented Hon’ble Minister for transforming and providing right ‘branding’ to the Indian postal services and requested him to continue  providing similar leadership, partnership and guidance for services exports growth.

He also maintained that the Industry requested Government to provide the market focus approach to services sector in the upcoming Foreign Trade Policy, as has been provided to the merchandising sectors for many years.