The Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) sector is leading the way in helping to drive the global economic recovery in the wake of one of the worst recessions in six decades.

That is the view of keynote speaker Robert Flanagan, principal in technology markets at Global Insight, who was talking about the state of the industry at the World Technology Information and Services Alliance's (WITSA) Global Public Policy Summit Bermuda 2009 (GPPS) held at the Fairmont Southampton yesterday.

Mr. Flanagan reckons that the economy will return to historically normal levels next year spurred on by a number of factors, including convergence, mobile leap-frogging, expanding Broadband, empowered citizenry, and ICT and health care.

He said recoveries will vary from 'W' shaped for the US to 'U' shaped for Europe, with ICT having many opportunities to take advantage of during the process.

"Currently, I believe our industry is going through an inflection point — the good news is there has been an uptick, but the not so good news is we are not so certain about the extent of the recovery," he said.

Mr. Flanagan gave an overview of the trends driving ICT in the future and improving standards across the world, some of which were already in place and others which would play their role in the coming months and years.

"Overall, a global overview was that 2009 was not a good year for the industry in that everyone took a downturn, but we expect it to recover in 2010," he said.

"There is some pent-up demand and we expect that to get realised next year."

Mr. Flanagan said the economy had slowed down in 2009, but he expected it to pick up next year with growth rates of between five and six percent, as reflected in leading market indicators.

He said in the scheme of things, the current economic crisis has not had as big an impact as the Great Depression of 1929 or the Japanese stock market crash of the 1990s.

Mr. Flanagan said different economies had reacted in different ways, with Group of Seven (G7) countries taking longer to bounce back than their emerging nation counterparts, however he added that meant there was significant room for growth by them further down the line.

Pointing specifically at the US, he said net corporate cash flow was on the increase, showing that business were starting to spend money on ICT again and that the demand was out there for the industry's products and services, allied to the fact stock markets were improving, thus boosting confidence in investment in the sector.

But one of the biggest measures of the direction of ICT was the dramatic recovery of technology stocks versus Standard & Poor's 500 stocks, however Mr. Flanagan warned it may take several months before a real trend emerged that things were turning around.

In addition, a rise in purchases made in the manufacturing side would lead to increased production and hours worked, further boosting the ICT industry and sparking an economic revival, however, he cautioned that presently less consumer spending and higher unemployment had to be factored into the equation.

"In summary, I believe the worst recession in six decades is over," he said. "The recovery will be weak initially.

"The bottom line is there is going to be a recovery, but it is not going to feel like that for a while."

Mr. Flanagan said that with the world becoming a much smaller place and inter-connectivity really coming to the fore, consumers would be demanding smaller and quicker devices, while more people would have access to the network in emerging markets and rural areas.

Concepts such as video conferencing would be more prevalent with businessmen cutting down on unnecessary travel and governments would find it harder to control Internet usage, as evidenced by the protests and demonstrations in Iran following this year's presidential election.

The event started on Friday, but the main part of the programme started yesterday as Premier Ewart Brown, Finance Minister Paula Cox and Michael Scott, Minister of Energy, Telecommunications and E-Commerce took the podium, followed by addresses from WITSA chairman Dan Khoo, and WITSA Global Public Policy Committee chairman David Olive, as well as co-chairmen for WITSA GPPS 2009, Nancy Volesky and John Kyle.