Correct policy decisions vital to promote software industry, says don

by Gamini Warushamana

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The dearth of skilled people, the main issue faced by the Sri Lankan software industry can be solved if the government and the relevant authorities take the correct policy decision and support the universities to produce IT graduates, Prof. S. Karunaratne told the Sunday Observer.

Prof. Karunaratne is the Chairman of the Sri Lanka Institute of Information Technology (SLIIT), the largest IT campus in the country that produces around 800 IT graduates and around 10,000 other skilled IT technicians annually to the fast growing software industry in the country.

Software industrialists always complain that the industry is lagging behind and losing the competitiveness as a result of the dearth of skilled people.

Prof. Karunaratne who is also an electronics engineer and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Moratuwa said that the issue can be easily addressed if all stakeholders realise the vast opportunity in the country in this lucrative new business and the government takes appropriate policy measures.

Today some government policies are not supportive and as a result children in middle income families cannot afford the cost of an SLIIT course. To complete a four-year IT degree at the SLIIT, a student has to pay Rs.440,000 apart from the Rs. 66,000 tax.

At the outset the government charged 10% tax and now it has increased to 15%. The SLIIT pays Rs.30 million annually to the government and if this money can be invested to develop the university it will reap greater economic benefits for the country.

Prof. Karunaratne said that the prudent policies adopted by earlier governments helped to develop the textile and apparel industry in Sri Lanka to its pristine glory today. In the late 1960s and 1970s there was strict exchange control and we were allowed to take only less than four sterling pounds.

However, there was an exemption for the textile industry. The government encouraged education, training and obtaining technical knowledge in the textile industry by relaxing those rules.

Today we need a similar tax exemption and other support for the software industry and specially for IT education. This is the ideal industry for Sri Lanka.

The industry targets US$ 1 billion export by 2010 and this is equal to the total tea exports.

According to the ICTA workforce survey there is a shortfall of around 5,000 skilled IT professionals to meet the annual industry demand. State universities do not have the capacity to produce this number.

Students who pass three subjects at the GCE Advanced Level examination can be trained as IT professionals. We set up the SLIIT in 1999 to cater to the demand of this industry because we foresaw the rapid growth.

Thereafter former Trade Minister, Kingsley T. Wickramaratne provided the money and donated a valuable block of land owned by the Mahapola Trust Fund at Malabe. Higher Education Minister at the time Richard Pathirana helped to obtain UGC approval for this non-traditional fee charging new university.

The SLIIT is a non profit making institute. We changed the academic structure, university traditions and attitudes of the students. Students can study while they are working or follow the first year course- engage in a job and then continue the degree course.

Today there are multi disciplines. students do CIMA or CIM or other courses simultaneously with IT degrees. We too can start various courses such as MSc that is highly relevant in this fast-changing industry. But the difficulty is in getting UGC approval and cutting through various other bureaucratic redtape which obstruct evolution of the institution, he said.