BENGALURU: The Indian government’s spending on IT is estimated to grow by 9.4 per cent to touch $7.3 billion in 2021 over the previous year, as the focus on Atmanirbhar Bharat, Digital India initiatives remains strong. The Narendra Modi-led government, which presented a paperless budget this year, has said that the country will have its first-ever digital census, and this will lead to an increase in the tech spending.
“The government in India will shift from being a cautious spender to opening the fiscal floodgates in 2021,” Apeksha Kaushik, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner said in a statement. Software, IT services, hardware and telecom will lead the government’s tech spending this year, according to the outlook. Gartner also observed that the weakened economy during the pandemic year 2020 led the government to reduce IT spending across various segments.
“Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, Indian government’s digital transformation projects were sidelined in 2020. However, in 2021, the government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat, Make in India and Digital India initiatives will take centre stage. The software segment, which includes application, infrastructure, and vertical-specific software, will experience the strongest growth in 2021,” the report added.
Globally, IT spending by the governments is expected to increase by five per cent to $483 billion in 2021. Adoption of artificial intelligence, cloud services and blockchain will be the major focus area.