Telecom reforms will boost BPM sector, says Telecom Secy

The government expects the reforms unveiled for tech companies to double the size of the $37 billion business process management (BPM) sector, create jobs and make India a global hub for digital services.
Telecom secretary Anshu Prakash told ET that the move by the Department of Telecommunications on Thursday to relax provisions for other service providers (OSPs), which will help IT and BPM companies to adopt permanent work-from-home and work-from-anywhere policies, is aimed at attracting big investments and generating jobs. OSPs refer to companies in services such as tele-banking, tele-medicine, tele-trading and e-commerce.

Sanjeev Sanyal, principal economic advisor in the finance ministry, told ET that the new guidelines create an architecture for India’s IT sector for the next two decades.

“One should not be merely extrapolating current BPO services into the future… the explosion of digital platforms means the post-Covid-19 world will create new opportunities for IT-enabled services and this will be worth millions of jobs in the next 5-7 years,” Sanyal said.

Another senior government official said the reforms should help to more than double India’s current BPM industry in the next few years. Officials said this is the first of the high-impact reforms planned in the digital space, with the government working towards making services the cornerstone of India’s growth story, basing it on a “robust and strong digital platform.”

According to the National Association of Software and Service Companies, the BPM market’s 8.4% growth is driven by incremental gains in export revenue due to increased adoption of digital technologies and automation tools and the acquisition of new customers.

The relaxations were lauded by the industry. Infosys cofounder Nandan Nilekani on Friday tweeted, “The reforms of Other Service Provider regulations for BPO/BPM industry is breath-taking in its simplicity. Truly a case of dramatic Ease of Business in the digital world!”

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Thursday that the Centre was committed to doing everything to ensure a conducive environment for growth and innovation in India and had simplified guidelines for the BPO industry and IT-enabled services.

The government on Thursday removed compliance and financial burden on the industry and facilitated work from anywhere. According to the new guidelines, the registration requirement for OSPs has been done away with and BPO companies engaged in data-related work have been excluded from the ambit of OSP regulations.

Requirements such as deposit of bank guarantees, static IPs, frequent reporting obligations, publication of network diagrams and penal provisions have also been removed. Several other requirements that prevented companies from adopting flexible work arrangements were scrapped.