MINISTER OF PARLIAMENTARY AFFAIRS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
(SHRI PRAMOD MAHAJAN)
(a): The Prime Minister of India and the President of the United States of America have signed a statement outlining their vision for Indo-US relations for the 21st Century. The vision statement, inter-alia, recognises that the two nations are leaders in the information age and are in the forefront of new high technology economy. The two sides have established an architecture of a regular, wide-ranging dialogue, including in the areas of trade and commerce, finance and investment. The economic and commercial dialogues is also likely to enhance mutually beneficial cooperation in Information Technology. Cooperation in knowledge based industries will also benefit from the Memorandum of Understanding(MoU) signed between FICCI and US-India Business Council on cooperation in knowledge-based industries.
(b): Since at present about 58% of the software exports is to USA, it is expected that requirement of software professionals for Indo-US Trade in the area of software alone will be a little more than 1 million by the year 2008 considering that a total of 2.2 million software professionals are required in the country by 2008.
(c) and (d): No such separate proposals have been worked out with reference to Indo-US economic cooperation in the knowledge based industries. However, to meet the requirement of software professionals in the country, Government as a general measure has under consideration a proposal to upgrade existing leading 43 Engineering Colleges/Regional Engineering Colleges to IIT level.
