Not as bold as we wanted: Atul Vijaykar, Intel

BANGALORE: Intel Corporation director South Asia Atul Vijaykar had a mixed reaction to the Union Budget 2000.

"The budget is mildly positive, but not as bold as we would have liked it to be," he told CIOL Bureau, adding, "We are making good progress in the areas of deployment of computers and growth of the Internet. However, if you compare the figures to China, they are five times bigger on both fronts. If we have to catch up with them, this incremental growth will not be enough. We will need to take giant steps."

He said communications was another area of concern. "Our telecom infrastructure is limited in bandwidth capacity and cost effectiveness. If you compare the situation to Singapore or the US, they are twice as bigger. In effect, our knowledge worker is paying a penalty. It has been four years since cellular operations began, one year since the Internet was thrown open to public and a year since they have been talking about allowing private Internet gateways. We now have to take a big step ahead."

Mr Vijaykar said that the five per cent reduction on hardware components was a positive step. "The imposition of SAD was only the removal of an anomaly. Earlier, while the domestic manufacturer was paying the SAD, the traders were exempted from it. However, the anomaly could have been removed by removing the SAD on the manufacturers."

He said there would be a reduction of five per cent on the bill of material. "Since the local OEMs will now get the benefit of 5 per cent duty reduction, the imposition of 4 per cent SAD on importers will reset the level playing field in favour of the local manufacturers," he added.