India's services sector on fast-track growth: Piyush

New Delhi: Union Minister for Commerce and Industry Piyush Goyal on Saturday said that the domestic services sector is on a fast track as the country is preparing on formulating standards for the services sector so that India can have high quality of services to offer to the rest of the world.

Speaking at the 2nd Indo-US Services Summit, the Minister of Commerce and Industries said that India is rapidly progressing across sectors such as healthcare, home delivery, telecom and technology.

"In India, we are formulating standards for services ecosystem so that we can very high quality of services which we offer to the rest of the world. We are also rapidly progressing to become one of the world's largest digital markets, be it fintech, edutech and telemedicine. From healthcare to home delivery, from telecom to technology, we are leapfrogging. And I am sure, the Indo-American engagement will see that ripple effect of leap frogging and growth on both side in the days and years to come," the Minister said at the Summit.

He also said that the services exports has grown upto 12 times, from $17 billion in 2001 to about $205 billion in 2021. He further stated that while the US is the hub of innovation, technology, research and quality education, while India has skilled and intelligent manpower at competition.

"India is now moving from a low-cost service provider to becoming a high-value added partner. We are focusing on end-to-end service delivery, back office in India are evolving into brain offices. We are transforming Indian offices and the way of working into centres for design, innovation, modern thinking," said Goyal.

"We have seen very robust employment generation in the sector. I am told that in Q1FY22, as many as 69,132 individuals were employed by our IT firms, which is highest ever in a quarter in the history of India. Clearly in the post Covid world, restoration of livelihoods will be the first and most important step to recovery," he added.

During the Summit, he lauded India's growing entrepreneurial population and stated that the country carries a competitive advantage because of the presence of the skills, startups, software solutions which will help the services sector to rapidly ramp up employment, business, income and work opportunities.

On business recovery front, the Union Minister said that India is rapidly meeting is service commitment throughout the world during the pandemic period.

"Right from Day 1 of the lockdown in March of 2020, all of you in conjunction with the government, moved very rapidly, faster than any part of the world. Into working from home, setting up systems, moving hardware, trading back stop arrangements or back offices, or safety net. Largely, we were able to maintain our international obligations, without any stoppages or bugs coming in the way. Our services exports last year were back to 97% level of the previous year. And currently we are looking at massive growth," he said.