According to The Sri Lanka Association of Software and Services Companies (SLASSCOM) and PricewaterhouseCoopers’ salary and benefits survey for 2013, there’s been a steady increase of 7 percent in the number of Sri Lanka's major export software and outsourcing firms over the last three years.

The Salary and Benefits Survey 2013 was primarily targeted at investors in the software and outsourcing sector, and provided a wide range of statistical information for job positions in the IT Sector, ITES Sector and in the support functions.

Sujiva Dewaraja, chairman of SLASSCOM, said the survey not only provided a dependable source of information for the existing companies, but also for the new entrants. The local salary data is benchmarked against regional salary data in order to highlight the competitiveness of human resource practices in the country, which provides more value to the report.

The survey also covers the entry-level salary scales of specific positions, providing a benchmark for post-graduate salary scales in the IT/ITES (IT enabled services) sector of Sri Lanka.

The Central Bank claimed that Sri Lanka's export software development and outsourcing segments brought in estimated revenue of about $600 million during 2012. However, the industry hopes to increase this to about a billion U.S. dollars, with about 80,000 employed by the year 2016.

The estimation, according to the ICT Export Value Survey 2010, commissioned by Sri Lanka's Export Development Board, was bout 16,500 employees. In addition and according to industry officials, the Sri Lanka's Export Development Board predicted that the IT industry employed over 60,000 people (including domestic market) in 2012, reported Business Process Outsourcing website.