About 16 countries are participating in the 27th round of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations. It is a South-East Asian nations forum, meeting this time to discuss and negotiate into building a free trade agreement (FTA) and India, obviously is under pressure.
Also, the Indian government wants the country’s leading IT giants, like Infosys, TCS, Wipro and others to widen their reach in markets like Europe, Canada, Australia and more, instead of just limiting themselves to non-English speaking countries such as China, Japan, and Korea.
Thailand Needs 1.8 Lakh IT Engineers from India
It doesn’t strike as a surprise, the importance that Indian techies serve all around the globe and in every multinational giant. In fact, so much that the representative from Thailand in the RCEP told that the meet would be pointless without India being a part of it.
Thailand, on February 1, 2018 approved the law for trade and investment in its new project called the Eastern Economic Corridor (EEC), in order to develop its eastern provinces into a leading ASEAN economic zone. For this, Thailand needs top class IT workers. The country holds millions of workers from neighbouring countries. It still is in dire need of 1.8 lakh IT workers, which it believes to hire from India, complying to the skillset Indian techies bring with them.
Chutintorn Gongsakdi, the envoy from Thailand said that he is trying to tie up with Indian educational institutions to get these workers for Thailand’s new project, Eastern Economic Corridor.
Govt Asks Infy and TCS to Expand to European Countries
The Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal , held a meeting with senior managers of TCS, Infosys, Wipro, HCL Tech, NIIT Tech, Tech Mahindra, Satyam Venture Engineering, Invento Robotics, and others, where Sangeeta Godbole, DG of Services Export Promotion Council (SEPC) and Debjani Ghosh, President of NASSCOM were also present.
In this meeting, he advised the IT giants to not concentrate selling their services only towards non-English speaking countries like China, Japan, and Korea but to try and expand towards opportunities like Europe, Canada, Australia and more. The meeting was aimed to discuss the opportunities for the Indian IT industry to grow their business in new markets like the Nordic countries, Eastern and Central Europe, Canada, Australia, and Africa.
This doesn’t mean that the government wants to divert its attention from growth in East Asian markets like China, Japan, and Korea. It simply wants the Indian tech giants to bag their best opportunities in other parts of the world too.
Piyush Goyal assured that the government of India will do everything in their power to provide them with the needful support for the global growth of India’s flagship industry and will make possible efforts to facilitate the IT service industry.