C-DAC: Press Kit - Archives(Press Releases) - Foreign delegates praise IT meet in Pune, IT to create

The Sri Lankan delegate Mr. Loku Hapu Arachchige Wasantha, senior analyst programmer, Central Bank, Sri Lanka, said, "The IT meet was an eye opener in that it exposed the lesser advanced SAARC countries to the rapidly developing range of IT products not only in English but also in some of the regional languages."

He said since India had taken a tremendous leap in developing softwares in multilingual information technologies, it should share its resources and expertise with SAARC member countries for their national development.

"Once joint ventures are set up in SAARC nations in researching and developing IT software for regional application, we can easily compete with the Americans and the Europeans", Mr. Wasantha said, adding that profits generated could be ploughed back to IT research to venture into other areas.

Mr. Mohammed Mijawar Rehman, programmer, Ministry of Science and Technology, Bangladesh, said since the SAARC nations had common culture and heritage with a strong shared vision to deploy M/M IT for national development, the software products and know-how developed in the SAARC countries should be shared with one another.

Pointing out that the IT meet was timely with IT multinationals making inroads by producing software packages in Asian languages, he said IT experts from SAARC nations should be given incentives to provide IT solutions "We are looking forward to joint partnership from India and Pakistan to set up IT centres in Bangladesh to train our young and vast manpower", Mr. Rehman said, adding that if India, Pakistan and Bangladesh come together in developing IT software products, it would emerge as IT super power in the world.

Mr. Jigme Lhendup, proprietor of Druk Information Technology, Bhutan, with a turnover of Rs. 2 million, said the conference was a great help for SAARC countries, especially Bhutan with a mere six lakhs population.

"If more M/M IT software packages are made available to us then it would speed up our work as we face shortage of personnel in our country", he said, pointing out that the conference was an high-tech affair.

Mr. Lhendup said the Government of Bhutan was starting a degree course in computer science at the only Sherabtse College in east Bhutan from next academic year and collaboration in IT products between India and Bhutan would go a long way in making the country computer literate.

Mr. Patrick A V Hall, professor of Computer Science, Computing Department, The Open University, UK, and a special invitee at the conference, said, "It was astonishing that so much was happening in IT industry among SAARC nations and clearly India has taken a great lead in producing multimedia and multilingual information technology solutions which is very useful for the neighboring countries."

He said the IT meet demonstrated that the SAARC nations were in the right direction by seriously focusing on investing in the IT industry which would be increasingly dominated by major IT multinationals trying to take a large chunk of the IT cake from SAARC nations.