Digital census, national health portal and revamp of MCA portal are expected to be a windfall for both hardware companies, which will likely see a surge in sales of laptops, tablets, smartphones and printers, as well as app and software companies that will build and run the tech backend.
The Union Budget 2021-22, presented by Indian Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, may not have had many major tax announcements directly impacting tech companies, except the fact that there is an increase from 0 to 2.5 per cent on customs duty imposed on several parts of mobiles imported into the company. This has been done to incentivize domestic mobile production. Also, the much talked of PLI scheme, which is an impetus to electronics goods manufacturing in India, is set to get an increased budget allocation. But a couple of projects announced in the Union Budget may help major tech companies to rake in the moolah in a big way. The two projects are National Census project of 2021, which would be an all-digital affair, and the revamp of the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) portal. Both are big-ticket projects. In fact, the Census one is going to be humungous affair with the budget outlay pegged at over Rs 3700 crore. The MCA portal overhaul is expected to have a project outlay of around Rs 400 crore based on the fact that the existing project, handled by Infosys, had a budget of around Rs 360 crore. The government is also setting up a pan-India healthcare portal for digital health management. This again will be a major shot in the arm for the digital ecosystem in the country. The forthcoming census could be the first digital census in the history of India. «For this monumental, milestone-marking task, I have allocated Rs 3,768 crore in the year 2021-22,» Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech.
