Infosys Technologies said on Friday it would employ all those candidates to whom call letters have already been sent, although the company is going slow on hiring due to slowing business.

"All the call letters that have been sent out will be honoured. . . we are sticking to our numbers... we will honour the commitments we have made," Infosys [Get Quote] co-chairman Nandan Nilekani told reporters on the sidelines of a CII event.

Infosys, one of the biggest employers in the country, has said that all general hiring in the company has come to a standstill as business has slowed down considerably.

Though Nilekani did not give out any numbers, it is understood that the Nasdaq-listed company is resorting to need-based recruitment, had made offers to 18,000 students of the 2009-10 batch from different campuses.

"They will be joining us in July this year," Infosys chief executive officer S Gopalakrishnan had said recently.

For the current fiscal, Infosys has been maintaining that it would hire 27,000 people.

Asked about the US government's decision to put curbs on H1-B visas, Nilekani did not offer any direct response but said protectionist measures won't help anybody. 

"Certainly we are all for free trade, its good for the world, its a way of spurring growth. While there is this murmur (H1-B visa issue), fundamentally I am hopeful that people realise that we need free trade," he said.

The US government's move to eliminate tax benefits to firms shipping jobs outside is stirring reactions from the Indian IT and BPO industry, seeing it as a protectionist step. The Indian IT and BPO sector employs two million IT professionals.