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Our Bureau

Bangalore , Jan. 21

WIPRO expects growth in US technology spending to slow down a bit in the current calendar year as compared to last year.

The US is the main market for Wipro's technology business and the company derives over 65 per cent of its revenues from the US.

The Vice-Chairman of Wipro and President of Wipro Technologies, Mr Vivek Paul, said growth rate in IT spending in 2005 is likely to slow down as compared to 2004, which had a catch-up spend of previous years.

"If you go by what the economy is doing, expectations are that the first six months are going to be flattish. There is no recession in sight. For the remaining six months of 2005, there's going to be acceleration in growth rate," Mr Paul said.

"However," Mr Paul said, "there is lot of uncertainty between now and then. As a result, if you look at the tech-spending catch-up of last year, our overall expectation is that the tech spending this year is going to grow, but at a slower pace than that of last year."

Tech spending in the US grew roughly by five to six per cent in 2004. "We expect it to grow between four to five per cent this year," Mr Paul added. Based on the interactions with clients, the interest in offshoring and outsourcing continues to be strong and healthy, he said.

Replying to a query, Mr Paul said Wipro has not seen any big jump in business prospects post-US presidential elections as anticipated in several quarters. "Neither our prospects were affected in the past," he added.

Meanwhile, Wipro Infotech, the domestic IT arm, continued to post a healthy revenue growth of 45 per cent during the December quarter over corresponding previous year. "Our growth rate is way above the market growth of 20-25 per cent," said Mr Suresh Vaswani, President, Wipro Infotech.

Revenues from services, which accounted for 35 per cent of Wipro Infotech's total revenues, grew by 41 per cent fuelled by growth in software solutions, infrastructure management services and consulting.

Key wins for Wipro Infotech during the quarter included a seven-year total outsourcing deal with YES Bank and a SAP implementation deal with Bharat Electronics.

It also signed up 20 infrastructure management services contracts, 19 systems integration deals, 28 consulting projects and 24 software projects during the quarter, Mr Vaswani said.

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