Crisis won’t hinder free trade: Infosys

Infosys Technologies Ltd, the country’s second-largest IT services provider, said it is expecting free business trade among countries to prevail in the coming fiscal despite a larger intervention of the US government to bail out corporate America.

The US government has hinted at implementing stricter H-1B visa norms to force companies to create jobs within the country, rather than bringing talent from other countries such as India.

The US government is also looking at taking away tax incentives for companies, which may get direct funding from its bailout package.

Nandan Nilekani, chairman and co-founder, Infosys, said in a CII event, “Certainly we are all for free trade, I think that it’s good for the world because that is also a way of spurring growth. I think people have realised that they need free trade.”

The H-1B visas are used by the US firms to bring technically qualified talent to work within the country and take advantage of the labour arbitrage.

Nasscom, India’s IT and BPO trade body, said in a statement, “The proposed amendment to the H-1B visa legislation is of extreme concern. In its current form the amendment seem to isolate and unfairly target Indian IT companies and severely restrict the level-playing field.”

Nilekani said, “Overall there is an ambiguity in that, so in general things are slow,”

Meanwhile, Infosys said it would honour all the 20,000 job offers, given out through campus placements.

For the next fiscal. “Whatever commitments we have made last year, we will honour it.”

The technology firm, however, did not provide any guidance for the next fiscal. “You have to wait for the outlook which we will announce in April,” Nilekani said.

Infosys had earlier said it is expecting IT budgets to fall significantly with the slowing global economy in the next fiscal with some sort of stability to trickle by December.