Asia urged to translate IT advantage into strength

Tuesday, 13 January 2004, 20:30 IST   |    1 Comments
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HYDERABAD: India Tuesday called upon Asian countries to translate their advantages in IT into a permanent strength by focusing on innovative ideas and concrete projects. Addressing a session of the second Asia IT Ministers' Summit, Information Technology and Communications Minister Arun Shourie suggested that Asian countries could take advantage of the software India had developed for the blind and customize it to their own requirements. The minister said these countries should share their best practices to find a solution to their own problems in order to bridge the digital divide. Ministers and senior officials from more than 30 countries are attending the two-day summit, inaugurated on Monday. According to a presentation made at the summit, IT software exports from Asia were growing at an annual rate of 30 percent while the IT-enabled services in India were growing by 70 percent. The Asian IT industry was expected to earn $88 billion in 2004 and Asia was the first choice for software for half of Fortune 500 companies in the world, it said. Addressing the summit, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu mooted the setting up of a Challenge Fund in the ICT sector in the region. Stating that ICT offered tangible gains in vital sectors such as education, health and governance, Naidu said the Challenge Fund could finance cutting edge applications that were relevant to the lives of the poor in areas such as connectivity for remote areas, education and health. He also suggested that the Asian countries adopt a common inter-operability framework while developing their e-government applications. "Another area which has a tremendous potential for cross-border collaboration using ICT is a paperless trading regime. Such a regime makes trade flows easy and more efficient," he said. Referring to the accelerating pace of outsourcing or offshoring, he urged Asian countries to seriously look at the possibility of working on common certification programmes and training modules focussed on creating a pool of trained manpower for different verticals being offshored by Western companies. "This would greatly facilitate investments in offshoring in developing countries," he said. He also emphasised the need for leveraging bilateral and multilateral aid for establishing a Virtual Tech University for the Asian region. Such a university should forge linkages with the best international institutions and provide high quality education at an affordable cost. This university could offer courses and training that are relevant in disciplines that offer economic opportunities for the future.
Source: IANS
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