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India's call for liberalisation of visa finds support

India's call for liberalisation of visa and work permit regime for professionals has found support in Germany with a top official warning that a 'rigorous and rigid' visa regime hampered their movement across international borders.

The 'difficulties' faced by Indian professionals and businessmen in getting travel and business visas to Germany were highlighted by Dietrich Kebschull, a senior official with German Agency for Technical Co-operation, known by its German acronym GTZ.

Kebschull, who is also Director of India-German Export Project, cautioned that this would affect German companies exploiting huge potential of off-shore development in India.

"The visa problem is a major stumbling block for Indian professionals to come to Germany," Kebschull said speaking at seminar on information technology software organised by Nasscom and IGEP over the weekend in Berlin.

Indian professionals and businessmen often needed to visit their clients in Germany and stay beyond 90 days to study details of off-shore projects, he said.

The use of off-shore software development has helped Indian companies provide competitive edge to about 43 per cent of India's total software exports of $4 billion.

Nasscom chairman Phiroz Vandrevala said that Indo-German co-operation in IT and software should also focus on strategic alliances and joint ventures, especially for start-ups and small and medium firms.

Kebschull shared this view and said the future of the global IT industry is in co-operation.

"India's skills in the IT sector and Germany's expertise in products and processes could be combined to give competitive products," Kebschull said.

Nasscom is already working on steps to increase company-to-company co-operation.

Indian software exports to Europe are expected to cross the $7-billion mark by 2005 and fetch a little less than $1 billion in 1999-2000.

A total of 23 Indian IT companies attended the event in a bid to increase co-operation in the IT sector.

NASSCOM said many companies in Germany get their software developed in India to gain competitive advantage. Germany has already taken a lead and has emerged as the second largest IT software and services trade partner for India in Europe.

Vandrevala said Indian software industry is pursuing a strategy to move up the value chain and provide high-end solutions in the field of e-commerce, Web-based technologies and interactive integration.

India presently accounts for about 1 per cent of the global software market and would increase its share only to about 3.5 per cent even if it achieves the ambitious target of $50 billion by 2008, about eight times the present level, he said.

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