Stressing the need for government initiatives to boost growth in this area, The ESC has suggested several corrective measures, including meeting the high bandwidth requirements, amending labour laws for export zones, giving income tax benefits and helping exporters market their IT-enabled services better. PTI As per the findings of this exhaustive study, foreign companies offer 10 giga bits of bandwidth - which the government would need to match - and there is an urgent need for conducting an independent study to suggest both short-term as well as long-term measures for this sector.

IT-enabled services include call centres, medical transcription services, back office work, help desk, Web content, digitalisation, translation and legal services. Tracing out three success stories in the relatively nascent field of IT-enabled services, the study named Air Infotech at Gurgaon, GE Gurgaon and Inde Dutch System Chandigarh as prime examples. It said the two call centres established at Gurgaon less than a year ago had done business worth Rs 550 crore, while the medical transcription and legal services business of the Dutch firm had raked in Rs 100 crore.

In yet another suggestion, the ESC study said IT-enabled services should be treated at par with software under the income tax act, to encourage increased overseas business inflow into India. Touching upon the labour issues in the export zones - specially the newly-created Special Economic Zones (SEZs) - these must move out of industrial development act's purview, it said. Besides government should allow use of contract labour as well as operation from homes to better realise the potential of IT-enabled services, it said. The ESC has asked the government to appoint consultants, and organise roadshows to help market these services outside the country.