S Sabyasachi, Senior Director, neoIT, too, admits that the growth for the immediate year and the next few years will be slow. "Nasscom's prediction of $60 billion could be on an aggressive side. But the IT story is intact. Having said this, the outsourcing story continues and we see recovery from mid FY09 and will go on till end of the fiscal."

There are dissenting views though. For instance, Partha Iyengar, vice president of IT research firm Gartner says "Nasscom's predictions are still very doable. This is a somewhat cautious phase with banks have a wait-and-watch attitude. After the US elections, though, the situation will stabilise and IT firms will have a chance to recoup losses and accelerate the growth rate."

However, Monish Chatrath, National Markets Leader, Grant Thorton, notes that offshoring may not happen in a hurry since banks and financial institutions will be laying-off employees, and offshoring to India will have a political backlash in an election year. According to Tholons, banks remain in a wait-and-see mode, they've become extremely risk-averse and are likely to defer many project starts until 2009.

(Source: Business Standard)