The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : Tax holiday should have been extended: IT firms

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Saturday, Mar 01, 2008
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Tax holiday should have been extended: IT firms

Special Correspondent

Increased allocation for education welcomed
Budget will help the IT hardware industry

Bangalore: The big ones welcome it and the smaller ones complain.

V. Balakrishnan, Chief Financial Officer, Infosys Technologies Ltd., termed the Budget presented by Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram as “balanced, trying to address the needs of all sections.” He said some sections of the information technology industry are disappointed because they were expecting an extension of the tax holiday scheme.

“Larger companies can cope without the extension, but smaller and newer companies may find it difficult to deal with the problems posed by the appreciation of the rupee,” he said. However, he welcomed the increased allocation for education which he said would help the IT industry. Moreover, the move to increase the exemption limit on assessees would “help moderate wage growth.”

Naresh Wadhwa, president and country manager (India and SAARC), Cisco, said the Budget would not only benefit the IT hardware industry but would also promote inclusive growth by the scheme to establish one lakh broadband-enabled common service centres in villages, connect academic institutes and providing major universities with broadband services.

P.G. Raghuraman, lead executive, Accenture Delivery Centre for BPO, said the thrust on education would benefit the IT sector. “We hope that these funds will be allocated to train the 3.5 million graduates who will be passing out and making them more employable,” he said.

Partha De Sarkar, president and CEO, HTMT Global Solutions Limited, expressed “disappointment” over the Finance Minister’s failure to extend the tax holiday advantage that is currently available to the software and BPO industries. He said this will “seriously affect India’s competitiveness in the BPO industry.”

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