Chennai: The Centre and other state governments could play a major role in boosting the business of the domestic software companies by utilising IT in various sectors in a big way, a top official of the Polaris Software Lab has said.

"Compared to the US government, which contributed 20 to 30 per cent of the total revenue of software business there, the investment made by Indian government in the IT sector was negligible," Polaris chairman and managing director Arun Jain said.

The governments in India were yet to utilise in a big way the software facilities in various departments, he said while interacting with reporters on July 9.

Describing the business in government sector as huge, he said a positive decision in this regard would help the software companies who have been affected by the recession.

Agreeing with the National Association of Services and Software Companies (NASSCOM)'s projection that there would be revival of software industry, Jain said the industry might need large number of trained software engineers after mid 2003 if everything went right.

PTI