Executive Summary
Sri Lanka is poised for growth in
knowledge industries and high-value-added services and expects to create 1
million employment opportunities by 2020 in such industries and services.
Information and Communication Technologies and Knowledge/Business Process Outsourcing
are two key industry areas expected to considerably contribute to this growth. IT/BPO
industry is expected to contribute over US$ 5 Billion by 2020. It is also likely
that a 1,000 startups in the technology sector will be created by 2020.
The key requirement that needs to be satisfied to achieve such ambitious growth targets is the availability of sufficient number of adequately qualified personnel. Sri Lanka annually produces around 7,500 graduates in ICT and related disciplines. However, an optimistic estimate of the man-power requirements to support the planned growth targets is at least 20,000 skilled personnel per year. Thus, we have a challenging task ahead of us to satisfy the industry needs, both quantity wise and quality wise. Another variable in the supply-demand equation is the skills of graduates produced by universities. While graduates from IT and other related disciplines have no trouble in finding employment, not all are absorbed in to the direct IT/BPO related companies.