The story of Hyderabad, the capital ofthe Indian state Andhra Pradesh, is truly inspiring forlate-comers to development. Within two decades, AndhraPradesh has been catapulted straight from a poor and largelyagricultural economy into a major service center. It hastransformed itself from a lagging into a leading region.Fuelled by an increase in service exports of 45 timesbetween 1998 and 2008, the number of information technologycompanies in Hyderabad increased eight times, and employmentincreased 20 times. Service-led growth has mushroomed inother parts of India and South Asia as well. Indeed, growthin the services sector has enabled South Asia to grow almostas fast as East Asia in this century, with growth of justunder seven percent annually between 2000 and 2007. Growthrates in South Asia and East Asia have converged. The twofastest growing regions in the world, however, have verydifferent growth patterns. While East Asia is a story ofgrowth led by manufacturing, South Asia has thrived onservice-led growth. The promise of the services revolutionis that countries do not need to wait to get started withrapid development. There is a new boat that developmentlate-comers can take. The globalization of service exportsprovides alternative opportunities for developing countriesto find niches, beyond manufacturing, where they canspecialize, scale up and achieve explosive growth, just likethe industrializes. The core of the argument is that as thenumber of goods and services produced and traded across theworld expand with globalization, the possibilities for allcountries to develop based on their comparative advantageexpand. That comparative advantage can just as easily be inservices as in manufacturing or indeed agriculture.
PDF
download
878987797
028-85220240
