India to double IT aces to meet global demand

India is looking to double enrolment of students in engineering colleges to meet burgeoning demand for information technology workers, both, overseas and at home, a senior government official said on Friday.

An IT expert group has recommended the government boost its pool of IT workers to match the sector's growth, said P V Jayakrishnan, secretary in the Ministry of Information Technology.

"We are looking at the recommendations and assessing how best it could be implemented. We need to optimally utilise the existing infrastructure for our regional engineering colleges," he added.

Global demand for Indian IT professionals is growing by the day, with countries such as Germany, Japan, Singapore and Britain now vying with the United States to attract qualified staff.

Industry officials say the overseas demand presents a challenge for the domestic information technology industry, as there could be a shortage of manpower.

Jayakrishnan, who was speaking at the annual conference of India's hardware industry, said the task would be ensure quality education while expanding the total pool of technology students.

"We should also be able to educate the poorer sections in information technology. The education should not only be in English, but also in regional languages," he added.

Jayakrishnan said the government was hoping to spread the culture of information technology to even the remotest parts of the country and was working to establish time frames for introducing electronic governance in all states.

He said the government was planning to reduce import duties on components for the hardware industry to give a fillip to the sector, which currently lags behind the software sector.

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