OCt 31: The Government will be spending $1 billion to improve the education system for generating 300,000 IT professionals a year by the year 2005. A task force has already been set up to implement the project named Operation Knowledge.This was announced by minister of information technology Pramod Mahajan while addressing a high-level business delegation from Japan at a conference organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) here on Monday.Mahajan said India is producing 100,000 IT professionals every year and a majority of these knowledge workers are going out to work in the overseas market. However, India also needs good-quality professionals to work in the domestic software industry at high-end technology, he added."We need to make more IT professionals in future to take care of the global and domestic demand of knowledge workers. Operation Knowledge aims to triple the volume of the IT professional output per year by 2005," said Mahajan.Mahajan said that while Japan had strengths in hardware, and entrepreneurial skills, India can offer its software expertise, knowledge workers and prowess in the English language in creating business opportunities between both the countries.Speaking about the business and economic environment in India, Mahajan said the Government has liberalised almost 100 per cent of the IT sector in India. Similarly, there is zero-duty regime as far as software export is concerned."Please tells us if there is any concern left related to IT reforms, I assure you that the Government will not take more then two weeks to respond. And, most probably the answer will be yes," said the minister.Mahajan said there are some tax-related issues as fast as the IT trade between India and Japan is concerned. "I hope that those issues can be resolved before the Indian delegation visits Japan for India-Japan IT Summit early next year. I can assure on behalf of the Government of India that we will reciprocate the Japan Government's every move. If you take one step, we are ready to take two steps," said the minister.Addressing the conference, the chairman of Japan Federation of Economic Organisations and chairman of Nippon Steel, Takashi Imai, said the Japanese Government has taken a lead in formulating a national IT strategy and will soon be implementing it. He said that the Japanese industry is hopeful that Indian presence in Japan will make India ``one of the major associates of Japan in the world''.
