Today, the Reserve Bank released the results of the 2018-19 round of its annual survey on exports of computer software and information technology enabled services (ITES). The survey provides information on various characteristics (e.g., type of activity; on-site/off-site nature of services; country of destination; and modes of supply) of India’s exports of software and ITES.

The latest round of the survey uses an activity classification that is in concordance with the classification adopted for the goods and services tax (GST) in the survey schedule (Annex).

For the 2018-19 round of the survey, 8,084 IT companies were approached of which, 1,818 companies, including the twenty largest companies, responded. The responding companies together accounted for 82 per cent of the total software services exports² of the companies covered (Table 1).

Highlights:

• India’s export of computer and ITES services (excluding overseas commercial presence) increased by 8.8 per cent during 2018-19 (Table 1).

• Computer services remained the dominant component of India’s software services exports, accounting for over two third of total software services; the share of ITES exports increased marginally in 2018-19 (Table 2 and 3).

• Private limited companies accounted for over half of total software services exports (Table 4).

• USA and Canada remained the top destinations for software exports, followed by Europe in which UK was the top destination (Table 5).

• The US Dollar remained the major invoicing currency for software exports, followed by the Euro and the Pound Sterling (Table 6).

• The share of on-site mode of delivery has come down from 25.5 per cent in 2007-08 to a little lower than a sixth of total software and ITES exports in 2018-19 (Table 7).

• The share of cross-border supply in exports of software services by India increased substantially at the cost of the overseas commercial presence mode of delivery (Table 8).

• Foreign affiliates of Indian companies continued to augment cross-border services provided by their parent companies in India, although software services provided through commercial presence of foreign affiliates declined by 21.5 per cent in 2018-19 (Table 9).

• Almost half of the software business by foreign affiliates of Indian companies was provided in the USA, followed by the UK (Table 10).

Ajit Prasad
Director  

Press Release: 2019-2020/1210

¹ The previous data release in the series, covering 2017-18 survey round, was published on December 10, 2018 on the RBI website.

² Exports of the relatively small companies were estimated by imposing the distribution pattern of the reporting companies. The details of the estimation methodology are published in the article presenting the survey results for 2016-17 round in March 2018 issue of the Reserve Bank of India Bulletin.