The Hindu Business Line : Less piracy, more jobs, says study

Pune, April 3 Reducing software piracy in Asia by just ten percentage points over the next four years could well see 4,35,000 new jobs, $40 billion in economic growth and $5 billion in tax revenues above the current projections.

In India, it could translate into 44,000 new jobs, $3.1 billion in economic growth and $200 million in tax revenues.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA), in a study, predicts that an additional $208 million could come in from local vendors alone.

And according to International Data Corporation (IDC), while the Asia region has much to gain from reductions in PC software piracy, high-piracy emerging economies such as China, Russia and India could experience some of the most positive impacts.

The study noted that in 2007, Asian economies spent over $231 billion on IT goods and services including computers, peripherals, network equipment, packaged software and IT services. That spending supported more than 3,48,000 IT companies with 5.5 million IT industry employees, and helped generate $167 billion in IT-related taxes.

China, Russia outlook

The study also pointed out that a ten percentage point reduction in China’s 82 percent PC software piracy rate could make its workforce the largest in the world within four years, surpassing the number of IT workers in the US.

Likewise, a ten-point cut in Russia’s 80 per cent PC software piracy rate could help make the Russian IT sector larger than India’s within four years, putting it among the top three fastest-growing IT markets in the world. The BSA study has included 42 economies, representing 91 per cent of the entire global IT sector. Of these, 11 were Asian economies whose IT sector represents 94 per cent of the total IT sector size of the region.

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