IT Industry Expectations from Union Budget 2019

“From this year’s budget we are expecting reduced duties on IT networking products. There should be a strong domestic manufacturing policy favoring global companies to invest more in India. The budget should reassess the preferential market access policy and ensure that honest tax paying citizens are given privilege and preference.”
M A Mannan, Country Manager – SAARC at Corsair

Also, with the fast paced developments in the IT industry, changing consumer buying patterns, variable GST rates for the various sub-parts in consumer goods, the industry is going through a demand-supply-cost gap. Hence, to address these challenges, the current 18% GST bracket can be brought down to 4-8%, which will help the IT industry as well as the consumers.”
Rajendra Chitale, CFO at Crayon Software Experts India Private Limited
“With initiatives like ‘Digital India’, ‘Make in India’ and ‘Personal Data Protection Bills’, Government has certainly put India on a Digital Innovation fast track. With Budget 2019, we require government to create policy frameworks that incentivize big businesses to invest in manufacturing locally in India. Further, we would also expect the Government to remove the day-today hurdles and obstacles faced in implementation of these initiatives.

Another area on implementation is to remove the bureaucracy and speed up the process of refunds – on Income tax as well VAT/ Service tax refunds.”
Sonit Jain, CEO of GajShield Infotech

Krishna Raj Sharma, Director & CEO, iValue InfoSolutions

Recent policy initiatives such as GSTN and IBC have enhanced confidence of investors and helped in increasing the ease of doing business. Projects like Digital India and Make in India have promoted manufacturing activities leading to employment creation. Software and Service continue to lead Indian IT focusing on emerging technologies such as Hybrid Cloud, Analytics, IoT, Mobility leveraging on social media. 100+ Smart city initiatives are expected to transform Indian cities with plenty of business opportunity across spectrum.
With oil price cooling along with inflation moderation, Government and RBI need to cut interest rate and ensure credit at affordable rates for business to build on the growth momentum. Fiscal deficit challenges should not come in the way in Government spends in the area of infrastructure, health and education for economically challenged population and ensuring enough job creation. With India having the largest youth population in the world for the next decade, it is very critical to engage them for building on the growth momentum of the country which is transforming every day. With elections around the corner, we expect government to be responsible in its spending, which are more essential than populistic.
The Government can look at tax slabs for corporate like in the case of individuals so that large entities pay more and SMBs pay less tax to ensure that they support them in creating new jobs. Recent 10% reservation for economically weaker section cites 8 lakh as the threshold earning for this new policy. Taking cue from this, income tax slabs need to get revised from the current 2.5 lakh slab to 6 lakh+ slab if not 8 lakh+ slab for individuals.
Larger wish of individual and business is for continuance of reforms by any government coming to power so that India continues its journey of realizing its potential in its economic growth journey focusing on inclusive growth of all.”
Rajaram Vidyavar, Director-Commercial Netrack Enclosures Pvt Ltd

The government is all set for Union Budget 2019 and there are lots of expectations from this session. We would like this budget to provide directions to key decisions expected to take place in IT and Manufacturing sectors. The industry is also anticipating revised schemes which will boost the ‘Make in India’ and ‘Digital India’ initiatives. Tax deductions on locally manufactured products and special packages for Indian manufacturing hubs will surely achieve zero imports by 2020, hence boosting Indian economy.”
Prashanth G J, CEO at TechnoBind
“I have many expectations from this budget and at the top of it is the Easy Availability of credit, especially to the MSMEs. The last 18 months have been tough with the banks tightening their lines and now in the last 6 months the NBFC scene has compounded the issue. MSMEs want easy availability of credit to sustain and grow their operations.
The other expectation would be that the government would use the budget as a financial tool to boost the Digital India efforts and drive the adoption of Digitization right up to the SME. This will have a huge effect on the economy by not only increasing productivity but giving businesses a step forward to competing in today’s modern business environment.”
Rajarshi Bhattacharyya, Country Manager, SUSE, Calls government to create policy frameworks that incentivize fresh investment and new business opportunities to transform India into a global manufacturing hub.

What do we expect in Manufacturing?
Multiple reports have backed the fact that Manufacturing has emerged as one of the high growth sectors in India. ‘Make in India’ has led a spur in manufacturing. India can be transformed into a global manufacturing hub, if we club India’s geographic advantage and huge pool of labour with government’s measures. The Indian manufacturing industry is poised for rapid growth. We are at the 77th spot in the World Bank’s ‘Doing Business Report 2019‘.
- Attracting investment in high technology, defense and aerospace: While Indian organizations have already proven their mettle in the auto and engineering sector; it is yet to see major investment in high technology, defense and the aerospace. Attracting investments in these sectors and clarity on set-up tax related issues for global companies should be addressed to make India a true manufacturing hub.
- Boosting MSMEs: Last year the government reduced corporate tax from 30% to 20% for companies with turnover up to 250 crores. Even, they have launched many other policies to help MSMEs. But the key areas like skill development, technological up gradation and regulatory barrier problems continue to persist, which should be addressed in the upcoming budget.To support and build a strong backbone, it is important to give enough incentive, skill formation, and learning mechanisms. Also, we shouldn’t overlook the fact that this segment creates a multiplier effect when it comes to job creation, which is still India’s priority.