Advertisment

Will Union Budget meet the expectations from different industries?

Union Budget has wide expectations from different industries. Lets see what are the different expectations from the experts of different industries

author-image
Sanghamitra Kar
New Update
ID

BANGALORE, INDIA: Union Budget has wide expectations from different industries. Lets see what are the different expectations from the experts of different industries.

Advertisment

Microsoft India, chairman Bhaskar Pramanik's expectations from the Union Budget 2015, are: "Over the past nine months, the Government has set the right context and articulated its vision for India’s economic development. We look forward to this vision being realised over the next year with key announcements in the Budget. Programs such as Digital India, smart cities and Skill India require the creation of technological infrastructure that will need budgetary support. A policy framework for industry and SMEs in particular that encourages innovation and adoption of technology can boost the Make in India initiative. We hope this year’s budget will create an enabling environment for Indian industry to realize its growth potential."

Pre- Budget expectations for the Skills sector, Rahul K Patwardhan, CEO, NIIT, said, "As private sector participation is key to developing skilled manpower, we expect specific indirect tax rebates in the forthcoming budget, for the companies & its partners i.e. be it direct partners or their franchisees, involved in Skilling. We would also expect the government to take initiatives to build social acceptance and industry buy-in for skills development through high decibel media campaigns, through which vocational skill courses/jobs are made aspirational. Placing a premium on certification by ensuring only certified people get government jobs is much required. Accelerated tax benefits should be provided to organizations that enable their employees to upskill through Sector Skills Council approved training and certification bodies."

Sanjay Motwani  country head, Raritan India & SEA, said, "Many initiatives being discussed by the new government would have a direct impact on building India as a world class Data Center Market. Some direct initiatives in State Data Centers & Smart Cities would attract large domestic & international organizations seeking a reliable, scalable & cost effective IT environment for growth. Similarly, indirect initiatives including spectrum & bandwidth related policies as well as incentives for e commerce, banking, infrastructure, telecom & media segments would positively impact the entire IT value chain. Outlook remains positive with projected 5-10% growth in 2015. In many ways, 2015 is a make or break year with respect to the global competitiveness of the Indian IT Infrastructure Market. The right policies & actions in Budget 2015 could spearhead India to a top position in the global IT Infrastructure Market. However, given the increasing competition amongst nations to attract global IT Infrastructure spending, delayed decision making could also mean India loses its opportunity on achieve global scale."

Advertisment

Pradeep Vajram, CEO, SmartPlay Technologies: “Right policies, incentives, infrastructure and encouragement from Government will act as a catalyst for ‘Make-in-India’, drive. This will transform import driven Indian electronic industry to an indigenous manufacturing hub, leading to reduction in import bill and making India a self-sustained economy. We expect that the evolution in manufacturing sector will naturally foster innovation and talent growth.”

Sanjay Rohatgi, president, Symantec India, said: “The budget should pave the way for expeditious implementation of e-governance projects, incentivising investments in world-class data centres and cloud computing infrastructure besides a chance to be a pioneer in the realm of Internet of Things. However, this should be done without causing disruptions in the free flow of data across borders – the lifeline of India’s IT exports. Such steps will ensure high availability of trusted and secure information ecosystem thereby providing much needed foundation for inclusive growth and development.”

Vivekanand Venugopal, VP&GM, Hitachi Data Systems, said: “Driving greater technology adoption is the government’s agenda, with good governance and economic recovery as the topmost priorities. With the government’s continued focus and investment in leveraging cloud computing for effective delivery of e-services by DeiTY (Department of Electronics and Information Technology), this is an opportunity for the government to enhance frameworks and policies for state governments to virtualize their datacenters for various e-projects.

Advertisment

The government’s focus on digitization, cloud and cyber security policies will help the industry in long-term. We hope the upcoming budget outlines clear business and economic measures to support the government’s commitment to invest in the right technology infrastructure to enable this transformation. The other aspect to this will be to rationalize customs duty, taxes and simply procurement process to accelerate the adoption of cloud services for large data centers.”

Srinivasan H R, vice-chairman and managing director, TAKE Solutions – “The three key factors for the IT industry that I would like the budget to address are policies for the growth of the SME sector in IT, focus on R&D investments and manpower development incentives.

Lastly, the technology industry is a manpower intensive one that requires constant re-skilling to stay globally relevant. Manpower development expenses need to be incentivised with deferred tax credits. So also recruitment or office establishment from/in rural and semi-rural areas need encouragement. If these incentives are aligned properly – the IT industry can generate twice the current employment in 4-5 years.”

Advertisment

Mrinmoy Purkayastha, VP, Alten Calsoft Labs, said,“With a task of a growth oriented budget, we hope to see increased investment in infrastructure: roads, railways, power, water supply and sanitation – which are the main pain points of SMEs. In most cases, infrastructure development can be accelerated through Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) which is a business model that the Government should make more attractive for businesses."

 This coupled with increased spending on vital sectors like primary education and healthcare, will lead to positive growth and prosperity in the long term. One of the biggest challenges for the government is to balance development between the 'leading' and 'lagging' states in India. This mismatch leads to labour migration to a few cities thereby aggravating power, water, sanitation and hygiene issues, and hampering planned infrastructure development in cities. Balancing and accelerating infrastructure in the ‘laggard/lagging’ states is essential. This would lead to enhancement of productivity of individuals, in turn impacting the economy as a whole.

With an ambitious plan like ‘Digital India’, we do hope the Union Budget 2015-16 will provide investments in India’s technology infrastructure, and a significant amount should be invested in developing a robust network infrastructure across the country to build a foundation for our ‘Digital’ economy.  A policy framework for industry and SMEs in particular that encourages innovation and adoption of technology can boost the ‘Make in India’ initiative."

Advertisment

C M Menon, regional sales director, Analog Devices India Pvt. Ltd, said: "At this juncture, tangible investments made towards building a strong infrastructure to support and leverage innovative technologies and introducing new reforms that will revive manufacturing – create more manufacturing clusters,  promote localization of products and demand, reducing import duties on electronic components and making importation of these components easy and introducing skilled labor development programs in the country will provide the required impetus to India’s electronics and manufacturing sectors."

Pradeep Nair, managing director, Autodesk, India & SAARC. said: "We expect the budget to provide significant impetus to the Make in India initiative. Simplified approval processes, promotion of industrial clusters, a clear roadmap to a unified domestic market through GST remain key. We see an opportunity for India to re-imagine manufacturing for the 21st century, rather than replicate what others have previously done. Distributed manufacturing using cloud, mobile and social technologies will be key. We believe the government will incent rapid infusion of new technologies like 3D printing to help India leapfrog into global competitiveness.

As India builds Smart Cities, a lot of attention is being focused on things like Wi-Fi, smart cards. While these are useful, implementing these in a piecemeal manner is sub-optimal. A technology based platform for urban planning will enable consistent, transparent,  time-bound delivery of results to the citizen. We expect the government to incent adoption of model-based planning technology like Building Information Modelling(BIM) to drive significant cost reduction and accelerated delivery. Promoting LEED-certified buildings and infrastructure will help drive sustainability goals.

A significant constraint to India's growth is the relative paucity of talent with industry-relevant skills. We expect the budget to promote rapid infusion of skills into the workforce.  In addition to traditional job roles, we expect a focus on developing entrepreneurial capability. Training cost offsets, deferred tax credits for start-ups, encouraging strong industry-academia linkages will all help."