The United States and India, world’s two largest economies, impact the global IT and Services industry and this manifested through the strong and growing trade and other relations between the two nations, said US Consul General in Hyderabad Joel Reifman on Thursday.
He was the chief guest at the inauguration of the first ever “Biz Summit 2020” organised by the Hyderabad Software Enterprises Association (HYSEA) on ‘Expanding Growth Horizons’.
“The US Consulate in Hyderabad is No. 2 in the world and the city is a credible place for investors for economic growth. Hyderabad is the second largest contributor to India’s IT industry with a growth rate of 17% and its IT exports were at $16 billion in 2018-19. Hyderabad was declared last week as the world’s most dynamic city,” he said.
“Some of the challenges India and US could work on are price control measures, digitization, protecting sanctity of contracts to make the trade relations truly free and equitable. While the number of duty free items coming into India from US are 3%, half of items imported from India qualified for duty free in the US and we are looking to equalise this in the short term,” he said adding that the US encouraged Indian companies to invest in the US and Telugu was one of the fastest growing languages in the US.
He said in the services industry, there was scope for tremendous opportunities between US and India and and it came from people to people contact as well as from the governments on technology sharing. The US Consulate in Hyderabad issued two million student visas so far.
Earlier, president of HYSEA Murali Bollu said that the summit focused on the ever expanding opportunity landscape that was evolving and changing due to disruptive forces of a dynamic market place deeply impacted by innovations, new business models and rapidly changing world of emerging technologies.
In a rapidly changing economic and technology landscape, it became more imperative than ever before to not lose sight of the big picture and find the right way for ones business to grow both for the new start-ups or those with a wealth of experience to look back on, he said on Thursday.
