Software industry grouping National Association of Software and Services Companies on Thursday reflected the risk of protectionism in Western economies and augured that the export growth rate for information technology and business services would increase to a double value from current levels during the fiscal to March 2011.

NASSCOM expects that the industry will reflect a growth of 13-14% in FY11 and offer up to 1,50,000 jobs.

In FY10, export revenues from products and services in grew by 5.5% touching almost the USD 50 billion mark. The Indian market saw a growth of about 12% to USD 14.3 billion.

"Spending is coming back and decisions are being made. The BPO sector is expected to grow faster than the IT sector. But unemployment in US remains a major concern", said NASSCOM chairman Pramod Bhasin.

Engineering and product development services succeeded to touch about USD 10 billion - the maximum we have seen so far. The government IT spend was also quite significant - USD 3.5 billion.

Although the global demand is improving at a slow pace, the outlook for the domestic industry is getting better and witnesses as soaring at 15-17% during the next fiscal, buoyed by telecom, banking and e-governance.