IT Cos. have greater ‘responsibility’: Infosys co-founder.
By R. Chandrasekaran
CHENNAI: India’s second largest IT exporter and bellwether Infosys executive chairman and co-founder N.R. Narayanamurthy has called on the industry to assume greater role and responsibility to address the issue of high current account deficit (CAD) by performing better.
Murthy was talking to the press on the sidelines of the Extraordinary General Meeting of the company. He said that IT companies’ exports is approximately 25 percent of the country’s total exports and will have to get better.
His views assumed significance as it comes on the heels of the industry’s meeting with the Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma. Narayanamurthy attended the meeting too. The government advised generating more exports and at the same time to reduce the consumption of coal, oil and gold.
“At the end of the day, we in India have a huge problem of current account deficit. Our imports are far more than our exports. Therefore, companies in this (IT services) industry which add almost 25% of our exports will have a new and greater responsibility as we move forward, to perform better,” said Narayanamurthy.
India’s current account deficit was 4.8 percent of the gross domestic product in the fiscal year ended March 2013. While the government has set a target of 2.5 percent, the recent sharp weakness in the Indian current has totally upset all calculations of the policy makers. Though the target is not to be achieved in the current fiscal year, the government was aiming to narrow it at least modestly. However, the current situation is threatening to deteriorate the CAD further from last year.
During the first quarter of the current fiscal year, the top companies such as TCS, Infosys and HCL Technologies have delivered better than expected results besides seeing a better prospect in the coming quarters driven by some good recovery in the U.S. from where Indian IT companies generate more than half of their revenues.
However, Murthy refused to acknowledge the results as a full-fledged recovery of the IT sector, saying it is too early to say it as a recovery.
To contact the author, email to rchandrasekaran@americanbazaaronline.com