Introduction: Sri Lanka is poised for growth in
knowledge industries and high-value added services and expect 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 that are expected to considerably
contribute towards this growth. It is expected that IT/BPO industry will
contribute over US$ 5 Billion by 2020. It is also expected 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.
