IT industry to create 25-30 lakh jobs by 2025: Prasad

The Dollar Business Bureau

Refuting the claims of any slowdown in the Indian IT sector, Law and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Tuesday that the sector will generate 25-30 lakhs jobs by 2025.

“As (the) IT minister of the nation, I completely deny and refute that there is any downturn in the employment in this sector. It is robust, slated for great growth and once digital economy ushers then you can fathom its development,” said Prasad, while sharing the achievements of the Ministry of Electronics and IT in the past three years.

The Minister said that the IT companies in India have created 6 lakh jobs in the past three years.

“IT firms directly employ around 40 lakh people and about 1.3 crore indirectly. We are bringing the BPOs in small cities of the country. The IT industry is growing and industry body Nasscom has assessed that in the next 4-5 years 20-25 lakh additional jobs will be generated,” he said.

On the issue of H1-B visa, Prasad said Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has conveyed India’s concerns on the issue when he recently visited the US and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, during his visit, will also convey the concerns to US government.

He further said the analysis by TeamLease for 2017-18 states that the IT industry’s hiring sentiments are positive and is increased by 4% in the six-month period - October 2016 to March 2017, as compared to the preceding six-month period.

TeamLease report also showed that the hiring sentiments in e-commerce and technology startup sectors have improved by 2%, with an estimated job growth of 14.94%.

Prasad said that in electronics manufacturing, the investment proposals have also increased in the last three years to Rs.1.43 lakh crore.

“From Rs.11,000 crore investment in 2014, total investment proposals have now increased to Rs.1.43 lakh crore in electronics manufacturing. At present, 72 mobile manufacturing companies have come. In this 1 lakh people have been direct employed and 3 lakh people were employed indirectly,” he said.

Drawing on figures in mobile manufacturing, he said that investment has increased to Rs.89,756 crore in FY 2016-17 from Rs.18,992 crore in FY 2014-15.

Prasad said that the 2.5 lakh Common Services Centres (CSCs), under Digital India programme, have created revenue of Rs.1,800 crore, including Rs.600 crore from the Aadhaar-related services.