New York: India remains the prime destination of outsourcing for the American companies, as the country turns out 75,000 English-speaking Information Technology (IT) professionals every year and has a low wage structure, a study has said.

Software development and maintenance as also business processing including back office functions like accounting, human resources, call centres and data analysis are the major areas of outsourcing to India, the 'Forbes' magazine said.

English speaking IT graduates, low wage structure and attractive labour pools takes India to the top position, the study concluded after comparing it with six other destinations – China, Russia, the Philippines, Canada, Mexico and Ireland.

While analysing profiles of seven countries, the study praised India for its friendly IT policies and commitment to ensure best possible facilities for its development.

"Outsourcing is so ingrained in the fabric here that the Indian government has a national minister specifically for IT. The government favours IT foreign ownership and imposes no export taxes," it said.

Talking about future, it said that India's outsourcing functions would change over time and it would get more complex jobs as countries like Vietnam offer rock bottom wages.

"Simple base level back office payroll and data entry will got to rock-bottom-wage countries over time and countries like India will move up the chain and take on more complex software and product development services," an analyst with Forrester Research, John McCarthy, was quoted as saying.

The study said US companies would outsource more than three million jobs by 2015, up from 300,000 today.

PTI