"By abolishing the excise duty on computers, the finance minister has significantly reduced the cost of owning a PC. I expect this to act as a trigger for the large-scale proliferation of PCs," said Sanjeev Keskar, country manager, AMD Far East Ltd.
Still, India's PC industry still faces an uphill battle. While excise duty on PCs have been removed, manufacturers have other concerns. "We are anxious to know about the excise duty on the components for local manufacturing" of PCs, said K.U. Subbaiah, managing director of Tyco Electronics, India
Similar concerns abound over the future of telecom manufacturing here. "The government has not given any motivation to the local telecom manufacturing industry. In my view, the government has missed a chance to make use of this growth opportunity in telecom to establish India as a manufacturing hub for telecom equipment," said Ravi Sharma, managing director, Alcatel India.
The Consumer Electronics and TV Manufacturers Association (CETMA) was also unimpressed. CETMA said there is little in the budget proposal to promote investment in the sector, even though it contributes 40 percent of all electronic hardware manufacturing in India.
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