Arun Jaitley has presented his union budget. With mixed reviews round the corner, Cell IT wants to highlight the key post-budget reactions of the IT fraternity in India
Debjani Ghosh, President, MAIT: The budget is strongly focused on bridging the divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have not’s’, and good work by the Government in identifying the right priorities for focus under the 9 pillars called out by the FM. We are disappointed with announcement of the R&D incentives reducing because we believe that it is critical for India to be one of the most innovative countries in the world and this move could be detrimental in building India as an innovation hub. I strongly urge the government to re-consider this move, as any restrictions on the R&D ecosystem are likely to decelerate innovation in the country and restrain the ambitious Make in India and Digital India vision.
R. Chandrashekhar, President, NASSCOM : The finance minister’s speech had a strong emphasis on leveraging technology to transform India. The initiatives announced today combined with swift implementation of Digital India will help to digitize India and provide effective citizen services. We would urge the government to move forward at a swift pace and build an effective PPP model.
Ramesh Mamgain, Area VP, Commvault India and SAARC: The budget will create a spinoff effect on an enterprise’s IT spend too. Besides, bank recapitalisation will help in improving the health of banks, and thereby allow them to finance old as well as new-age ventures.
Ravinder P Singh, Director – Solutions Strategy & Business Development, IoT, Smart Cities & Digitization, Dell India: Today’s announcement of Digital Literacy Mission Scheme in rural areas is a key stepping stone to achieve next level of human capital transformation. We welcome the government’s initiative as this will help in building digital infrastructure from the ground up that will help India grow much faster and better to enable economic growth.
M P Vijay Kumar, CFO, Sify Technologies: In order to make the Government’s social and infra spend effective, a good monitoring and audit system through independent accounting firms across the country is critical. Even if 1% of spend towards audit is actioned, the productivity of spend will increase by 3 times and we will see intent matching action; Intent has to grow beyond mere announcement in the newspapers. Equity of economic growth through social spend will also curtail inflation in the long run and help economic growth.
P. Venkatesh, Director – Product Division, Maveric Systems: Emphasis on fiscal consolidation and sticking to the fiscal deficit of 3.5% of GDP are welcome; this should therefore encourage the markets.The emphasis on the rural economy, food sector and also the coordinated move to provide FDI at 100% into the food sector clearly shows the wholesome integration of the policies.
Shrikant Shitole, Managing Director, India, Symantec: Protected and secure technology infrastructure fostering engendering trust will be critical to success of projects like e-marketplace, digital vaults for certificates and e-procurement. Legislative backing for Aadhaar should have requisite privacy provisions.
Pardeep Jain, Managing Director- Karbonn Mobiles: The withdrawal of BCD, CVD and SAD exemption on mobile phone chargers, adapter, battery, wired headsets and speakers for actual manufacturing is disheartening and is likely to stifle the growth of Indian Smartphone players and impact their price competitiveness. The parts and components ecosystem in the country is still in its nascent stage. While the incentives on local manufacturing announced in the previous budget were welcoming, government should have allowed for a gestation period for local handset players to strengthen their manufacturing capabilities before withdrawing tax exemptions on completely built units
Sunil Khanna, President and Managing Director of Emerson Network Power India: The effort to incentivize the Make In India program by way of domestic value adding in the Electronics Manufacturing Systems segment is a step in the positive direction as is the removing of custom duties. From a taxation standpoint, lowering of Corporate IT Tax for companies not exceeding Rs. 5 crore turnover to 25% plus surcharge is a positive move as it offers incentives to SMEs and SMBs in the country to focus on their growth. Another proposal that will benefit the country and stimulate start-ups on the growth trajectory is the amendments to the taxation for new manufacturing companies incorporated after is 1ST March 2016 as they will now have the option to be taxed at 25% plus surcharge and cess provided they do not claim profit linked to investment.
Rahul Agarwal, MD, Lenovo India : We are happy that the budget establishes a strong emphasis on technology in almost all the development areas highlighted by the Finance Minister. Technology has been recognized as an important enabler across initiatives ranging from agriculture to skill development to PDS to public procurement. Also, the announcements on the Rural Digital Literacy and the Digital Saksharta Abhiyan are positive strides to bolster the ‘Digital India’ vision.