The 'killer flu' currently spreading across South East Asia is slowing down the pace of business dealings and also delaying policy decisions, industry analyst IDC said on Friday.    

Business processes have slowed down as most of the multi national companies having Indian operations work out of Hong Kong and Singapore, currently seen as danger areas for the spread of the flu, Kapil Dev Singh, head, IDC India, told PTI.

The overall pace that Indian IT companies are used to do business with, has also been affected to a large extent, even though not a single case has yet been reported from India, he said.

Singh, however, declined to give any projections for quarter-on-quarter impact.

Echoing the same fear, Skoch Consultancy said, "The threat from SARS is more serious than the impact the Iraq war would have on Indian IT industry."

"So far it is marginal but deferred visits and postponement of decisions by the global customers of Indian IT companies are not good for the domestic IT industry," Sameer Kochhar, head, Skoch Consultancy, said.