In his maiden visit to the Silicon Plateau of India, British High Commissioner Richard Stagg said though the UK government was under pressure not to outsource IT work overseas, it would not bring in restrictions that will have an impact on the companies’ bottomline.
“There are concerns whether jobs are being exported to India or China or the Philippines or to lots of places. There has been pressure on where outsourcing happens? the pressure to outsource to a company working in the UK and not a company working overseas. We genuinely believe that commercial decision should be taken on the basis of commercial logic,” he said.
Stagg, who was leading a delegation of ICT firms, said the companies should maximize their shareholders’ value over time and not to do anything for short-term political gains. “We do get some criticism for that stand,” he admitted.
However, he said once the government started bringing in restrictions there would be no political end to it. “(We will) end up with a very rigid business model which will lead to brittleness and brittleness will lead to cracks,” he said.
Referring to the geo-political situation in the sub-continent, Stagg said in spite of India having “a rather difficult neighbhourhood to operate”, the UK companies were quite comfortable in investing in the country. “India has been very successful in having long-term stability and democracy,” he said.
Stagg said, in the IT sector, there were a large number of small companies which had the potential to branch out and become big if they found the right partners and the right investors. “I think there is a big and positive story in this,” he said.
Stagg said till October the UK government had issued 250,000 visas to Indian nationals. “We anticipated 300,000 visas (for the full year) and we are pretty much on target,” he added.