Slowdown may have touched the Indian shores. However, retrenchment or layoff is not going to be a major problem in India as compared to the US, according to panelists at the ongoing India Economic Summit.
Jai Menon, group CIO, Bharti Enterprises and Director (IT & innovation), Bharti Airtel told FE, ?We are seeing no job cuts. In fact, the market is growing and we are getting more and more partners to come in.?
Global recruitment and human resource consultancy major Manpower?s global chairman and CEO Jeffrey Joerres said, ?Our business in India, which is less than 1% of our global $21 billion business across the world, has witnessed a 15-20% decline due to the current meltdown. This has been basically due to the reluctance of the ITes sector to hire new manpower and also because of employee nervousness and natural hesitation to leave their current jobs.?
Joerres believes that although the Indian job market will not be affected to the extent in the US, yet it will be another year-or-so before they are able to stabilise. ?MNCs are likely to adjust their staff strengths, but reduction in employee numbers will not be as big as in the west,” Joerres said. The main takeaway of the travails of the travel and tourism session was that tourism industry should have an inclusive growth with concerted effort of the government and the private sector.
Kingfisher Airlines, chairman, Vijay Mallya said that hotel beds were provided mostly by the private sector, transporting by both national and private carriers. ?But so far there has been no co-ordinated effort by the private sector and the government with common goals and schemes. We need to move up the value chain so that we have a better class of tourists from a better socio-economic group who will spend and contribute to the nation?s economy,” Mallya said.
Priya Paul, chairperson, Apeejay Surendra Group India, pointed out that land costs were terribly high so ?we should be allowed to build bigger and taller buildings.?
Both Mallya and Paul said that the government should lower taxes so that airfares and hotel rooms are available at affordable prices.
Ankur Bhatia, executive director, Bird group of companies, pointed out that tourist flow to India has decreased by 18% in the last week itself.
Manfredi de Cluneres, chairman, Silversea Cruises Group, Monaco, said India needed to improve its infrastructure to attract more tourists. ?Top quality tourists will need top quality infrastructure,? Cluneres pointed out.
Suhel Seth, managing partner, Counselage India, said, ?We need to build a brand India. We need to tap the huge domestic population which has a huge potential,? Seth said.
Sujit Banerjee, secretary, ministry of tourism acknowledged that lots needs to be done in the sector. ?We need to explore adventure tourism, rural tourism, heritage tourism, history tourism and wellness tourism,? Banerjee said.