Infy for more funds to SMEs

“For the short term, we need to look at credit availability for small and medium enterprises. In any economy small and medium enterprises create majority of jobs. They spur the growth of the local economies,” he said in a message to the World Economic Forum that began its 40th meeting here.

Stating that issues affecting the financial sector should be addressed by the global leaders as they impact everyone, he said while in the last 15 years there has been tremendous growth led by excess liquidity created through financial innovation, “last year was in some sense a reset. The same set of parameters may not be available to spur growth in the future.”

The need of the hour, he said, is to strengthen the global and local economies. “First and foremost we need to invest in jobs in the short term. We also need to address the issue of retraining existing workforce.”

The global leaders, Gopalakrishnan added, also “need to look at what governance can create in order to spur growth in the future.”   Talking about shortcomings in the IT industry, the chief of India’s second largest software exporter said, “IT industry and users of IT are significant users of power and electricity. There is a need to ensure we do whatever is required to reduce the IT industry’s consumption of electricity. He mentioned privacy issues in the online world as another concern “as with the growing reach of IT social networking sites are becoming ubiquitous to our day to day life.”