Sri Lanka's Information Technology Market will be among the best potential growth prospects in South Asia, states the Business Monitor International (BMI) of UK.
Total IT spending is seen as nearly doubling to US$494mn by 2013, with considerable upside. This projected CAGR of 15% would make Sri Lanka one of the fastest-growing markets in the region, states BMI in its IT market report.
The BMI further states that the progress is a consequence of the end to Sri Lanka's long- running war in mid- 2009.
Earlier the total size of the legal IT market was estimated at US$254mn in 2008, just 2% the size of India’s with the effects over the years of the country’s political and economic instability, disruption of distribution channels, the negative impact on incomes growth, and underdevelopment of the country’s telecoms infrastructure, BMI points out.
By the same token, however, the market has considerable growth potential, BMI states.
"Indeed the computer market has comfortably been growing at a double-digit CAGR for the past several years, yet penetration remains below 5%. Computerisation has only just got started in the government service and major public and private sector organisations remain largely un-penetrated in terms of ERP systems and other enterprise software", the BMI further illustrated.
Despite the government’s financial weakness, a focus on restructuring government through the application of ICT has achieved some results, BMI points out and explains the nature of Sri Lanka's ICT growth and government strategies to promote ICT.
The BMI report further explains, Sri Lanka’s computer hardware sales were estimated at US$196mn in 2008, and are projected to reach around US$368mn in 2013. An estimated 350,000 computers were sold in Sri Lanka in 2008, despite a slowdown in the second half of the year. This annual total could increase over 650,000 by the end of BMI’s forecast period. The domestic software market is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 17% over the forecast period until 2013.
Progress is expected over BMI’s five-year forecast period, with internet penetration reaching 20%, and broadband penetration 14.5%, the BMI report states further.
