IBM Corp’s latest forecast for the information processing industry projects real average annual growth over the next five years of 6% to 8%, senior vice-president Allen Krowe said in Cambridge, Massachusetts this week. Speaking at the Seybold Executive Forum, Krowe noted that the increase represented a significant improvement on the past two years when the industry grew just 3% in money terms, but saw no growth when adjusted for inflation. But it is still a staid rate of growth compared with the inflation-adjusted average of 14% a year achieved in the years 1980 to 1984. He did not relate the figures to IBM’s own projected performance but it traditionally says it expects to grow at least as fast as the industry as a whole.