Informing this to newspersons here today, NASSCOM Chairman S Ramadurai and its President Kiran Karnik said the exports for the current year would be $22.5billion.

The industry employee base crossed the one million mark during the year, they added. Ramadurai said belying expectations, the exports touched the highest since 2001 when the IT slowdown began. ''The Indian software and services industry has been able to maintain its growth momentum and is in a strong position to leverage global software opportunities and establish India as a premier IT destination in the world.''

Karnik said ''the performance once again reinforces our confidence in attaining the projected target of 50 billion Dollars in 2009-10.'' He said the year had witnessed greater adoption of global delivery model with Indian vendors establishing their presence in high margin segments.

Last year, IT software and services grew by 30.5 per cent to touch $12billion, while the ITES-BPO segments grew at 44.5 per cent to log $5.2billion. For the current year, the industry was expected to grow by 30-32 per cent, he said.