Budget Special 2016

Budget SPECIAL

Union Budget 2016-17 – The Growth agenda for the Economy continues The much anticipated Union Budget 2016-2017 has outlined a positive structure for growth of infrastructure, education and the agricultural sector which simply indicates the government’s move towards giving impetus to its Digitalization mission and creating skilled employees across the country. Though there has not been much in store for start-ups and the India Inc, this can be a perfect time for women entrepreneurs to kick off their business journeys. In the networking segment, Routers, broadband modems, set top boxes, Digital video recorder and CCTV cameras will become cheaper which signifies that the IT hardware industry will get a big boost in these lines.

On the other side, implementation of the most awaited tax reform – Goods & Services Tax (GST) has still not able to take off, which is a setback to the industry and is expected to come in effect asap.

Corporates and stakeholders across the country have given a mixed reaction to the budget of 2016-17. A quick look at how the industry has reacted –

Dinesh Malkani President - Cisco India and SAARC

Debjani Ghosh Vice President, Sales and Marketing Group, Managing Director, South Asia – Intel Corp

“The Finance Minister’s balanced ninepillar approach shows a determination to keep India’s fiscal deficit at 3.5% with prudent themes of realizing social, financial and physical infrastructure. The Budget continues to focus on infrastructure and the rural and sector with planned investments that will not only create jobs but also drive economic growth. I believe the specific measures to improve ease of doing business and the favorable tax treatment for start-ups and MSMEs will go a long way in employment generation through indigenization. With the budget, the government has taken dynamic steps to nurture local innovation and entrepreneurship, generate jobs, diversify the economy and support sustainable growth. We look forward to partnering with the government in its various initiatives.”

"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. This budget, unlike any other, has not treated technology in isolation but integrated the effective use of technology across all the strategic imperatives in keeping with the intent of a Digital India. This budget has laid emphasis on governance reforms and ease of doing business, while highlighting the need for enhancing educational skills in order to make India knowledge based economy. Intel along with NASSCOM launched the National Digital Literacy Mission in 2012 and we are very heartened to see the government’s continued commitment to extending NDLM to 6 crore rural households."

Anil Valluri President - NetApp India & SAARC

Vivekanand Venugopal VP & general manager - Hitachi Data Systems, India

“It certainly is a transformative budget with key focus on farmers, rural India and the middle class. The focus on infrastructure build with substantial allocation and the continued focus on skilling and empowering through additional allocations is the right thing to do for making the country more productive.

This government clearly understands the power of technology as reflected in the larger flagship initiatives like Digital India. The Digitization of the government sector, like setting up of Digital Literacy mission which will cover six crore rural households in India ensures transparency and the huge focus on promoting Start-ups’ will only help create more jobs and propel the economy further.”

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“Hitachi Data Systems welcomes the measures introduced as a part of the Union Budget for 2016-17. The budget has laid the groundwork to create more opportunities for education, skill development and job creation in the country. One of the major aspects of the budget announced is that technology will be used in all spheres, starting from tax and markets to data mining and more with the help of a better IT system. The focus on enhancing digital literacy in rural areas to cover 6 crore additional rural households is a well thought move by the government to transform and deliver growth with increased connectivity across the country. As a key aspect of PM Modi’s Digital India initiative, the proposals announced by the finance minister on e-governance entail using technology to speed up governance decisions and plans.”

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. ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ remained important items on the agenda in the Budget this year. The changes in the customs and excise duty rates on components & subcomponents reaffirm the ‘Make in India’ vision of the government.

This will help in building a robust component ecosystem."

Rajesh Maurya Regional Director, SAARC - Fortinet

Vinay Sinha Head of Sales – India, Director Commercial Business, AMD Asia Pacific-Japan (APJ) Mega Region

“It is great to see that the Government of India has decided to focus this year’s Union Budget on digital literacy by setting up a scheme to be launched to cover 6 crore additional rural households. This access to technology will empower citizens, enables startups, and put India’s organizations on the path to digital transformation. The decision to set up 1500 multi-skill training institutes under the National Skill Development Mission will provide India’s youth multiple options to learn future-ready skills. This will in turn foster a culture of innovation and positively impact the Indian IT ecosystem.”

Jaijit Bhattacharya Partner – KPMG

“This budget has opened up many large opportunities for technology companies and these are very exciting times especially for a leading network security company like Fortinet. We are buoyed by the business opportunities in the emphasis of using IT for tax filing/litigation, adoption of JandhanAadhaar-Mobile platform, land record modernization, automation of 3 Lakhs fair price shops in the PDS, citizen centric service delivery or the plan to start 1500 multi-skillcenters to impart IT skill throughout the county. The digitization of services will also fuel technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and data analytics. The large scale adoption of IT in governance simply means more data will be generated, processed and stored."

“The Union budget is sharply focused on a few key themes, which were already declared by the FM earlier. The budget focused on an efficient and effective government, rationalization of taxation, heavy focus on rural with funds for de-stressing rural economy, Soft and hard infrastructure with over Rs 2.2 trillion for combined rail, road, airports & waterways, focus on human resource development and destressing of the financial systems, including bank. It is also a welcome step to move from a fixed fiscal deficit target to a range, which will provide necessary fiscal headspace to the government. Overall the budget appears to focus on building the fundamentals of the economy and the economic & financial institutions.”

Altaf Halde Managing Director - South Asia, Kaspersky Lab

Hari Om Rai Co-chairman – FTTF (Fast Track Task Force) & CMD – Lava International

"The overall Union Budget 2016-17 is encouraging for the common man, especially the tax relief in HRA. The announcement of Digital literacy scheme to be launched to cover 6 crore additional rural households is a welcome move. This will not only boost the fast adoption of digital technologies across the country but also encourage digital means to reach out to consumers and different markets. Start-ups getting 100% tax exemption for 3 years except MAT is again a good call taken by the government, as this will entice budding entrepreneurs to start their own business and since we are targeting this sector for our software business, it could prove beneficial for us as well. Besides, it will also help in creation of more and more jobs in the country."

Suneet Singh Tuli CEO - DataWind

“We are pleased with the broad expansion of the social net for those at the bottom of the pyramid. Such support via healthcare, employment and skills development is broadly acknowledged as a means of poverty alleviation. The digital literacy scheme for rural households is a key element of these activities and can play a significant role in their successful implementation. We believe that the manufacturing sector should get the required thrust. Enabling the frame-work of setting up 1,500 institutes of skill development will help augment the numbers of those entering the labor market for the first time and those employed in the organized sector.”

“Thanks for implementation of industry suggestions to streamline excise procedures for manufacturing with the Excise approvals been and rightly substituted by self – declaration. The industry is unhappy on the imposition of 2% SAD on populated PCBs used in manufacture of mobile phones and tablet computers. As much as half of production cost of a Mobile phone consists of populated PCBs and this imposition of 2% SAD will mean that the duty differential between complete mobile phones and its parts / components for manufacturing will be significantly diminished. India has not yet developed the eco-system for the complexity involved in populating a mobile phone bare PCB.”

Ravinder P Singh Director – Solutions Strategy & Business Development, IoT, Smart Cities & Digitization, Dell India

“The announcement of Digital Literacy Mission Scheme in rural areas is a key stepping stone to achieve next level of human capital transformation. India is going through a massive transformation with Smart Cities, Make in India and Digital India initiatives that will have far reaching impact in the growth of urban and rural India. Technology is not only the backbone for these initiatives but also a critical stakeholder for the success and sustainability of these programs. 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.”

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Budget SPECIAL Umang Bedi Managing Director – Adobe South Asia

M N Vidyashankar President - India Electronics and Semiconductor Association

“We congratulate the Finance Minister and the government on announcing an efficient and effective budget to curtail the fiscal deficit, without a cut in expenditure.

Specifically for the IT industry, the proposals outlined in the Union Budget 2016 promise a significant expansion of the domestic market and add thrust to the government’s overall digitization agenda. Schemes like the digital literacy mission to e-educate rural households will work towards bringing more and more Indians into the folds of the connected world. Initiatives like the creation of an online repository of qualification documents, an e-platform for an unified agriculture market will ensure robust IT platforms are deployed towards furthering automation.”

“Government has shown great intent in promoting the start-up ecosystem in India. With Government's announcement to promote women entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurship in the SC/ST category, we will have an immense role to play along with MSME in making this initiative successful.

We are honored with government's trust on associations like IESA and look forward to work in tandem to realize this socially important goal. With Government’s announcement to promote women entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship in the SC/ST category with a propose budget of INR500 crore, we will have a critical role to play along with MSME in making this initiative successful.”

Deepak Kumar Sahu Publisher-VARINDIA

R. Chandrashekhar President - NASSCOM

The Union budget 2016-17 is focused on the growth and development of infrastructure including the Project in Smart cities, Digital India, Education, Healthcare, Citizen service projects, Insurance and Skill India which will give a boost to modernization programs and with heavy focus on rural India. Total fund of Rs 2.2 trillion for combined rail, road, airports & waterways will focus on human resource development and de-stressing the financial systems, including banks. It is good news for the IT hardware companies expect prices of devices like modems, routers, set-top-boxes to go down by 8% within a year. Another noticeable point is on the change in duty structure that will encourage the Indian ICT industry move to next level of manufacturing.

“The finance minister’s speech had a strong emphasis on leveraging technology to transform India. The initiatives announced 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”.

The annual budget proposals set the policy direction for the country and Budget 2016 does articulate the emphasis on accountability, transparency and governance. However, in the backdrop of global economic volatility, there are unmet expectations on policy announcements that enable ease of doing business for our sector.

Lalit Chaturvedi GM Marketing -Kyocera Document Solution India

Ashraf-el-Arman MD - Xerox India

“At first glance the budget looks promising for IT and IT related industries.

The government has given increased impetus to investment and growth with boosting the entrepreneurs by providing investment friendly measures such as promoting the ease of doing business and improving the taxation scenario in this budget under Make In India initiative. This coupled with the rationalization of various duties and taxes in this budget, the manufacturing in IT sector is here to receive a mega boost.”

Manish Sharma President CEAMA and Managing Director Panasonic India and South Asia

“The Indian economy is growing at a rapid pace despite the global slowdown. The Finance Minister has clearly highlighted the growth pillars of the Indian economy in Agriculture, Rural, Social sector, Skills, Ease of Doing Business and Tax and Compliance reforms. We are happy with the government impetus on Make In India by providing tax and duty benefits and these will go a long way in strengthening the manufacturing capabilities of India. Another important milestone has been the use of technology to increase accountability of the government, authorities, and courts is a welcome step and will provide the right fillip to fast track procedures and will become the growth engine of the country.”

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“The Government plans to establish a digital depository of School Leaving Certificates, College Degrees, Academic Awards and Mark sheets for easy access for students, institutions and employers. With our expertise in document technology and services offerings, we believe there is an opportunity for us to collaborate with the government, institutions and employers and work with them in the vision of creating a digital repository in India.”

Anwar Shirpurwala Executive Director - MAIT

"#Budget2016 has met our demands partially to help the Indian ICT industry moves from assembly to next level of manufacturing, however, certain products have been missed out. We hope that preferential duty tariffs will be extended to include components and parts that go into the manufacture of laptops/notebooks in the near future. Having existing manufacturing facilities, this will help to unleash the full impact of 'Make in India' and realize the twin goals of higher domestic value addition and local employment generation.

Measures taken to proliferate use of technology and increase overall penetration of IT in the country are commendable."