National Association of Software and Service Companies said on Thursday that India's booming information technology enables services and business process outsourcing industry would continue to perform robustly and expressed confidence that it will turn in an annual growth of around 50 per cent for the next four to five years.

President of Nasscom, Kiran Karnik told reporters in Bangalore that around 50 per cent growth was sustainable both from demand and supply side as India had the human resources, capability and infrastructure in the sector.

India's ITES-BPO clocked a growth of 59 per cent in 2002-03.

Describing India's 26.3 per cent growth in IT exports in 2002-03 as "phenomenal" given the world economic situation, president and COO of Exult Inc, Kevin M Campbell said, India's English educated workforce has a "large lead time" over China in the ITES-BPO segment.

Meanwhile, Nasscom, the apex industry association of IT software and service companies in India, also underlined the need for the ITES-BPO industry to target new service lines to widen their gamut of services to achieve sustained growth.

"Indian vendors have so far been able to garner a market share of two per cent in the ITES-BPO segment and will need to tap new service lines such as engineering, research and development, logistics and sales to capture a share of 4.8 per cent by 2008," Karnik and Nasscom chairman Som Mittal said.