New Delhi: The economic slowdown in the U.S. has hit India's IT sector again. The software and services export in the country might not be able to achieve the set target of $60 billion by 2010 because of the deceleration of U.S. market, the biggest market for the country's IT industry, reports Financial Chronicle.

D.K. Sareen, Executive Director, Electronic and computer Software Export Promotion Council (ESC) says, "Slowdown of the U.S. economy coupled with rupee fluctuations, indecision of the corporations to sign the outsourcing contracts, growing bankruptcies in the West have contributed to the deceleration of growth of IT exports by 29 percent in dollar terms. Things might revive if the markets recover but it seems a tall achievement." As a measure to it, the council has suggested to divert the focus to other markets like Latin America, Far East, South Africa and EU.

However, the industry body Nasscomm, which set the target, considers that 64 percent of the overall revenue aggregate comes from exports. The export market has grown in Europe apart from U.S. and UK at a CAGR of 55 percent from 2004-07 in varied verticals including the high end technology and telecom.

As ESC points out, the rate of exports have slowed down massively, as witnessed in 2006-07 computer software and services stood at $31.172 billion higher by 28 percent than the previous FY. But in the previous year, it grew by 43.30 percent.