New Delhi, Nov. 3: Just days before the visit of the US President, Mr Barack Obama, India Inc has upped the ante on outsourcing by saying that their acquisitions and investments in greenfield projects in the US are providing a huge number of jobs in that country.
“The investments by the Indian companies has created and saved around 65,000 jobs in the US,” Dr Amit Mitra, Ficci secretary-general said in a press conference along with Indian Ambassador to the US, Ms Meera Shankar.
A report by Ficci-Ernst and Young report on ‘Direct Investments in the US by Indian Enterprises’ was released on the occasion. He said that Indian companies have taken up defunct plants in the US and turned them around thus saving thousand of jobs there. The chamber said that most of the investments are not in the services sector for which the Indian firms are being attacked in the US.
A total of 374 acquisitions have been made and 127 greenfield projects have been set up in the US by the Indian investors, said Dr Mitra.
Mr Obama has recently spoken against outsourcing to countries like India saying it results in job losses. Earlier this year, the US government had hiked the fee for H1-B and L1 visas, which could impact the domestic IT industry. Also, Ohio state’s ban on outsourcing of government IT projects, has further irked the IT industry.
Bharti Enterprises vice-chairman and managing director, Mr Rajan Bharti Mittal, who is also Ficci president, said that business is a two way street.
He said that his company Bharti has itself outsourced network management to an American IT company IBM.