Today, the Reserve Bank of India released the data related to the 2019-20 round of its annual survey on exports of computer software and information technology enabled services.

The survey collects details on India’s exports of software services (computer services and information technology enabled services (ITES)/business process outsourcing (BPO) services) as per type of activity, on-site/off-site nature of services, country of destination and four modes of supply. The survey schedule is given in the Annex.

For the 2019-20 round of the survey, 6078 software export companies were contacted, of which 1475 companies responded, which included most of the large companies. The responding companies accounted for around 82.7 per cent of the total software services exports² during the year (Table 1).

Highlights:

• India’s export of software services stood at US$ 128.6 billion during 2019-20, registering 9.1 per cent growth over the previous year (Table 2).

• Exports of computer services and ITES/BPO services contributed 66.6 per cent and 33.4 per cent, respectively, of the total software services exports (Table 2).

• Among the BPO services exports, the share of business consulting services including public relations services increased during the year (Table 3).

• Private limited companies accounted for more than half of the total export of software services (Table 4).

• The USA was the major destination for software exports with 56.6 per cent share. Europe had 27.6 per cent share, nearly half of which was in the UK (Table 5).

• The US dollar was the principal invoicing currency for software exports with 71.6 per cent share. Euro and pound sterling together accounted for another 16.7 per cent (Table 6).

• The off-site mode remained the preferred mode of delivery of the total export of software services (Table 7).

• The share of exports of software services through the cross-border supply mode increased during the year; other three modes of delivery (viz., consumption abroad; commercial presence; and presence of natural persons) together accounted for 24.9 per cent (Table 8).

• Software exports by foreign affiliates through commercial presence, where the USA and the UK were major destination, stood at US$ 16.6 billion in 2019-20 and total exports of software services by India, including the services delivered by foreign affiliates are estimated at US$ 145.2 billion (Tables 9 and 10).

Ajit Prasad
Director   

Press Release: 2020-2021/1251

¹ The previous data release in the series, covering 2018-19 survey round, was published on November 18, 2019 on the RBI website.

² Exports of the relatively small non-responding companies were estimated by imposing the distribution pattern of the reporting companies.