Isreal may lose some 15,000 to 30,000 jobs in the hi-tech sector to India and China if the country-based multinationals go ahead with their plans to transfer jobs abroad, Motorola chief in Israel Elisha Yanai has said.

The industry has been gripped by fear that if local and foreign high-tech companies operating in Israel go ahead with plans to transfer jobs abroad, Israel is liable to lose high number of jobs, accounting for some 30-40 per cent of the total industry jobs, Yanai said in a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Outsourcing and India: Complete Coverage

"Multinationals based outside Israel like Intel, Motorola, IBM and Cisco are transferring 40 per cent of their R&D workforce to cheaper countries like India, China and in East Europe," Yanai said asking Sharon to convene an emergency meeting to prevent this, daily Ha'aretz reported.

Israel Association of Electronics and Information recently conducted a poll that indicated that Israel lost over 3,000 hardware and software development jobs over the past few months, and more plans are in the offing, Yanai, who also serves as the president of IAEI, said.

Calling for urgent attention, he added, "We must contend with this serious problem, and I can bear witness that as Motorola Israel CEO, I was forced to deal with it daily over the past year, and we have regrettably lost hundreds of jobs."