Mumbai: The economic slowdown in the US, the main market for India's IT/ITeS industry, may lead to 3.4 per cent fall in the pace of growth of the country's software exports revenue in 2008-09, according to industry body Nasscom.

The national Association for Software Exporting companies expects the IT/ITeS industry to sustain growth rates in the region of 22-24 per cent in 2008-09 against 29 per cent last fiscal.

''The global environment will have some impact on software industry's growth. At the same time, the fundamentals are strong. We also expect new opportunities emerging for outsourcing,'' NASSCOM chairman Ganesh Natarajan said at the annual BPO summit.

While the short-term US outlook is muted, technology spending worldwide is forecast to remain strong supported by momentum in Europe and the Middle East and Asia-Pacific and an expected resurgence in the US, Nasscom said.

Alternatively, Nasscom said, the short-term cutbacks in US technology spending could even lead to higher offshoring of IT/ITeS services.

The IT/ITeS industry, now focused on sustaining growth above 20 per cent, against much better performance in previous years, is fighting against the odds of a rising rupee, increasing wages, higher attrition rates amidst recessionary trends in the market. 

Industries, meanwhile, have been delaying their IT budgets while many outsourcing vendors fear cutbacks on discretionary spending by clients.

Nasscom said while IT services exports grew by 28 per cent to touch $23 billion in 2007-08, BPO revenues were close to $11 billion showing a growth of 30 per cent in the same period. The overall IT-BPO revenue, including both domestic and exports including hardware, are estimated to have crossed $64 billion in 2007-08, a 33 per cent growth.

With 64 per cent share to overall revenue, exports accounts for lion's share while the industry employs 1.6 million professionals.

Nasscom, however, says the Indian IT/BPO sector is on track to reach $60 billion in exports and $73-75 billion in overall software and services revenue by 2010.

The domestic market too has reported gains by growing at 44 per cent in 2007-08 to touch $23 billion, mainly driven by the hardware segment.