Peter Lewis, global team leader of ICT at Federal trade facilitation agency Austrade, said it was hoping to double Australia's number of ICT exports over the next five years.
Lewis estimated that despite there being more than 15,000 companies producing ICT products or services, only roughly six percent of these firms export.
He said AusTrade had been making a big push in the industry to increase the number of ICT exports coming out of Australia. Lewis has recently returned from San Francisco, where he was senior trade commissioner for the past four years, to head up a global ICT team.
Lewis said it was sometimes a matter of getting noticed in the overseas market the exporter is trying to break into. He said he suspected that the domestic market was seen as easy and attractive, yet exporting wasn't necessarily difficult to break into for companies which had a cutting edge product or service.
According to Lewis, there had been a number of ICT decision-makers visiting Australia, who have been meeting with potential Australian exporters.
Lewis admitted it can sometimes be more difficult for ICT companies, compared to other market sectors. He said ICT was dealing with intangibles, and long lead times were often common so it wasn't just a matter of responding to a tender.
