The Hindu : Business : Fillip to hardware hailed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 01, 2006

Business

Business

Fillip to hardware hailed

Shanthi Kannan

Scope to become global competitor in IT, ITeS areas

CHENNAI: India is now looking at hardware manufacturing in a big way and this will help in making the country a global competitor in the IT and ITeS areas, said Ajay Chowdhry, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, HCL Infosystems.

He drew attention to the Finance Minister's budget speech where he said that with the spread of information technology (IT) and IT-enabled Services (ITeS), time is now ripe to make India a preferred destination for the manufacture of semiconductors and other high technology IT products.

The Chief Financial Officer, iGATE Global Solutions, N. Ramachandran, said the increase in the rate of Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) from 7.5 per cent to 10 per cent (increase of 33.33 per cent) was not justifiable as it was inconsistent with the Financial Minister's earlier announcement to keep the tax rates moderate.Likewise, the proposal to include long-term capital gains arising out of securities in computing book profits for the purposes of MAT could also have been avoided

The President, CEO and Managing Director, Infosys Technologies, Nandan M. Nilekani, said on the IT front, the budget had been neutral. However, the proposed eight per cent duty on over-the-counter packaged software would impede IT penetration to the vast masses.

The President, Cisco Systems (India), Rangu Salgame, said it was encouraging to see the focus on India's e-governance policies.

The Chairman, CEO, President, SemIndia Inc., Vinod Agarwal, said that the budget had acknowledged the importance of semi-conductor and high-end manufacturing industries to the growth of the Indian IT industry and the economy.

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