India to spend $7 billion on IT sector in 2016

New Delhi: Government of India will increase spending on IT services and products by 3.1% this year to $7 billion, a report by IT research and advisory company Gartner said. The central and state agencies will spend on internal services, software, IT services, data center, devices and telecom services.

“Government spending on software will total $938 million in 2016, a 9.9% increase from 2015,” said Moutusi Sau principal research analyst at Gartner, adding that the software market will be led by growth in infrastructure. Internal services will grow 5.8% in 2016 to reach $1.5 billion. Internal services refer to salaries and benefits paid to the information services staff of an organisation. The information services staff includes all company employees that plan, develop, implement and maintain information systems.

IT services which includes – consulting, software support, business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, implementation, and hardware support – is expected to grow 8.8% in 2016 to reach $1.6 billion – with the business process outsourcing (BPO) sub-segment growing by 22% in India.