India's export of software services rise by 10.3 pct in 2016-17

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in its recently released annual survey on "computer software and information technology enabled services (ITES) exports" has said that India' s total export of software services increased by 10.3 percent to USD 97.1 billion.

In 2015-16, India's total export of software services excluding exports through commercial presence was USD 88 billion.

"Exports of computer services remained the dominant component, with private limited companies and public limited companies holding equal shares in exports during the year," the survey stated providing insights on various characteristics of India's exports of software services.

For 2016-17 round of the survey, 7,506 IT companies were approached, out of which 1,362 companies (accounting for 81.2 percent of the total software exports) responded.

Exports of the remaining companies were estimated by using the distribution pattern after classifying them in four groups of IT services, business process outsourcing (BPO) services, engineering services and software product development.

The annual survey indicated that USA and Canada remained the top destinations of India's export of software services, followed by Europe in which UK accounted for nearly half of the total exports.

"The US dollar was the principal invoicing currency, accounting for 73 percent of software exports, followed by the pound sterling and the euro," the survey highlighted adding that the off-site mode remained the preferred mode of delivery.