Schroeder woos Indian tech pros

Our eFE Bureau in Bangalore

Inviting Indian IT professionals to work in Germany, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder on Tuesday said that due to the increasing degree of internationalisation of the global economy no country could remain isolated in the pursuit of growth and development.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder

On a whirlwind one-day tour of the India’s IT capital, Mr Schroeder visited the newly-opened 750,000 sq ft E-learning centre of Wipro and the Siemens Informational Systems Ltd (SISL) in the Electronics City in Bangalore.

In a brief interaction with software professionals at SISL, Mr Schroeder said Germany was looking forward to attract more and more IT and software professionals from India. “There is increasing competition to attract the best brains and Germany cannot remain isolated in this regard.” But, he pointed out that it was not a one way process and his country was looking forward to exchange its advanced technology to make it a mutually beneficial enterprise.
Mr Schroeder said he was happy that out of the 10,000 ‘green cards’ issued by Germany, 2000 had were given to Indian IT professionals. He emphasised the need for a peaceful global order to reap benefits of technological breakthroughs for the development of the economy. “Only in a peaceful world, can countries prosper,” he remarked.
Earlier Mr Schroeder had a glimpse of two new products developed by SISL — medical imaging software called picture archival communication system (PACS) and speaker identification system which identifies an individual’s speech based on certain unique features of the voice.

Earlier, on a tour of the SAP Labs facility here, German interior minister Otto Schily said his country would take into consideration the issues concerning visa and migration of Indian technical professionals. Mr Schily said the security enviornment would become tough following the September 11 incident in the US.

About the discrimination against Indians in Germany, Mr Schily said there was some reluctance towards migration within Germany, but stressed that there has been no major incidents hurting the Indians.
Speaking on the occasion, Infosys MD Nandan Nilekani said Indian companies had good growth prospects in Germany.

Speaking about Sap Labs’ experience in India, Sap AG executive board member Dr Peter Zencke said running a development centre in India had many positive factors like availability of good quality engineers, level of comfort with the English language and active support from government and technology parks which offer excellent working conditions.