MUMBAI, Feb 11: India’s software and services exports rose 28 per cent to 340 billion rupees ($6.9bn) in the nine months to December 2002 from the same period a year earlier, an industry group said on Tuesday.

National Association of Software and Services Companies chairman Arun Kumar said the jump in exports came despite a slump in global information technology (IT) spending.

“Despite the slowdown, increased interest by customers and aggressive forays by Indian vendors led to larger (offshore) contracts to India,” Kumar said.

This saw growth of 20 per cent in IT services and a 61 per cent expansion in IT-enabled services, such as call centres and other administrative support operations, he added.

“This reflects the continued growth that the sector is able to maintain despite a much larger base,” Kumar said.

Software exports are expected to make up 20.4 per cent of India’s total export revenue in the year to March, up from 4.9 per cent in 1997.

Kumar did not give any forecast of export revenues for the year to March 2004 but said the performance for the year to March would be in line with the first nine months to December.

He said exports to the US continued to post robust growth, although there was a marginal decline to Europe.

NASSCOM president Kiran Karnik said the current year’s performance was marginally affected by the recent appreciation in the rupee against the dollar and by the India-Pakistan confrontation earlier in the year.

“The impact of the rupee would also be marginal, but we would know only at end of the current quarter. The Indo-Pak confrontation basically affected travel advisories leading to some delay in sealing of orders,” Karnik said.

INDUSTRY: Indian industry grew by 5.4 per cent in the first nine months of the fiscal year ending March 2003, compared to 2.7 per cent during the same period a year ago, according to official figures released on Tuesday.