Indian IT industry lauds Union Budget

BANGALORE, INDIA: The Indian IT industry has received the Union Budget with optimism and enthusiasm, as it believes that most of the announcements on education and knowledge industry will ultimately benefit the IT industry.

“The Finance Minister has seized the task of skill development by the setting up an overarching National Skill Development Mission. The knowledge industry will be happy to play a major role in this humongous task," says Asoke K Laha, managing director and chief talent officer, InterraIT, Noida Special Economic Zone-headquartered engineering software firm.

"While the 100,000 Internet-enabled Common Service Centres (CSCs) and State Wide Area Networks (SWAN) will play a major role in taking the benefit of IT to masses, the number is still insignificant for one billion technology-deprived Indians," says Pankaj Jain, president and COO of webdunia.com, multi-lingual portal and email service in 11 Indian languages.

"This effort needs at least five-fold increase every year to ensure higher reach," Jain adds.

Naresh Wadhwa, president and country manger (India and SAARC), Cisco said, “The government has delivered a progressive budget by focusing equally on infrastructure and rural development, education, healthcare and employment generation, with proposals to help create a climate for balanced growth.”

According to him the vision to drive inclusiveness through technology has got a definite impetus with the proposals to set up 100,000 broadband-enabled common service centres in villages.

“Allocation of funds to accelerate power reforms and construction of roads will boost infrastructure development. The approval and fund allocation towards the state data centre scheme will help take the benefits of IT to the grassroot level,” he adds.

“Encouraged by the 5-year tax holiday, I expect increased investments in non-urban areas in healthcare from both Indian and international players. On the taxation front, the reduced tax burden will be a relief to individual taxpayers. It would have been a boon for Indian industry had the same been applied to corporate taxes. However, the exemption of customs duty on specified parts of set top boxes and certain raw materials used in the IT/ electronic hardware, as well as reduction in excise duty on wireless hardware cards and customs duty on convergence products are welcome measures for the ICT industry,” says Wadhwa.

Pradeep Gupta, chairman of CyberMedia, says, “The emphasis on building India into a Knowledge Society through a series of proposals--setting up three new IITs, scholarships for Innovation, R&D and a National Knowledge Network to connect Universities--is very welcome."

"The significantly higher allocation for education and health sector and setting up of a new National Skill Development Mission offer a positive signal to the knowledge-based industries to contribute to the economic development of the country," says Kapil Dev Singh, country manager of IT intelligence and advisory firm IDC India.

"The contribution of IT industry to the buoyant Indian economy did not deserve excise enhancement on packaged software and imposition of service tax on custom software," he adds.