Budget 2016-17: MAIT welcomes Jaitley’s announcement

NEW DELHI: Manufacturers ‘ Association for Information Technology ( MAIT ) , the apex body representing IT manufacturers, has welcomed Finance Minister Arun Jaitley's General Budget 2016-17 speech in Lok Sabha today.

Lets go through MAIT's reaction  on Budget 2016-17

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. 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 a knowledge based economy.

"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," she said.

According to Nitin Kunkolienker, Vice President, MAIT "We hail the Union Budget 2016 announcements; IT hardware companies expect prices of devices like modems, routers, set-top-boxes to go down by 8% within a year and about Rs 10,000 crore investment in local production capacities."

"The change in duty structure will encourage manufacturing of consumer premise equipments like modems, routers, digital video recorder, STB for internet, IP camera. We expect investment of about Rs 10,000 crore for their local production. I expect their prices will go down by 8% in first year and by 10% in one-and-a-half year."

According to Anwar Shirpurwala, Executive Director, MAIT "#Budget2016 has met our demands partially to help the Indian ICT industry move 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."

"For the first time the government has clearly put an effort of creating an integrated approach by building connectivity through road, rail, air and waterways."

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