Bangalore is on the verge of overtaking the Silicon Valley as the place with the world's highest concentration of information technology workers, even as American firms continue to send jobs overseas.

The Indian hi-tech city is home to technology giants like Infosys, Wipro, Tata Consultancy Services and several US-based IT majors.

Karnataka IT and biotechnology secretary Shankaralinge Gowda said that Bangalore has 160,000 professionals working in the IT sector today. This number, he said, will go beyond 200,000 by mid-2005, exceeding the number of high tech workers in Santa Clara County, the center of Silicon Valley, which has 175,100 IT workers, according to California's Employment Development Department.

Information-technology work accounts for 100,000 of these 160,000 jobs in Bangalore, while the remaining are employed in call centres and other business process outsourcing areas,

The US Department of Labor puts the total number of people employed in Santa Clara at 819,900. Of these 175,100 are tech workers, employed in computer design and related services; telecommunications companies; Internet service providers and Web-search portals; data processing, hosting and related services; and computer and electronic product manufacturing.

Meanwhile, CnetNews.com quoted Sam Haddad, chairman of the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame and a consulting professor at Stanford University, as saying that the Silicon Valley is not in danger of losing its stature as a tech leader, and it can benefit from competition overseas.