India on Monday said Asian countries should take a concerted action against the outsourcing backlash by the United States, Europe and Australia to challenge the growing threat of protectionism, while charting out a three-point agenda for the Asian nations on taking IT to the masses.
"Outsourcing backlash is a common concern now in the Asian countries. We should take a concerted view and action on the outsourcing backlash unleashed by US, Europe and Australia and face these challenges with a strong counter force," Arun Shourie, Union IT and Communication Minister said in Hyderabad at the inauguration of the second Asian IT Ministers' summit.
Shourie said similar arguments and cases also come up in WTO as certain countries can not go on expecting opening up of goods and services from others while protecting their own services and markets.
Lauding India's IT sector and its professionals as exemplary in the global scenario, he said 35 per cent of the R&D is done by Indians and 100 of the Fortune 500 companies have set up their R&D centres in India.
"The country has achieved $16 billion revenues in software and IT enabled services out of which $13 billion is exports. And just as when we have started to do well in this sector, protectionism has started to grow to affect this industry," Shourie said.
The minister asked the 32 participating Asian countries to work jointly for bridging the digital divide and taking IT to the masses while suggesting three steps to strengthen the IT framework in the Asian region.
"We have to identify the core competitive areas of each country and learn from each other. We should take up series of specific projects and put the report and progress of these projects quarterly on website and select one great project for the Asian region," he said.
Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu said ICT (information and communications technology) is a strategic tool for development.
The two-day summit has undertaken discussions on issues like standardisation of IT development and digitisation of culture.
