Indian IT and IT-enabled services industry has been witnessing an export boom over the last few years. IT services exports are projected to grow at a healthy 30 per cent. We feel this Budget needs to focus on the domestic IT market in terms of increasing the profitability of service providers as well as giving incentive to industry for investing in IT.

E-governance should be another thrust area. In this, fund allocation across different departments like health, municipality, education, transport and the subsequent monitoring of those funds through third-party sources would help the true benefits reach the citizens.

Skill development and infrastructure are two other areas which would need careful planning for them to contribute to the growth of the domestic IT business.

Education spends need to be increased to finance higher education for underprivileged students. Also, faculty and R&D quality of engineering and business schools would need support from the government and a central fund for the same could be created. Corporate contribution to such a fund can be encouraged through tax benefits as well.

Finally, India is also witnessing a lot of incoming foreign direct investment in the IT and ITeS sector. We want a careful analysis of the benefits of export obligation requirements on incoming FDI for increasing exports apart from the tax benefits being offered at present.

India's infrastructure has not kept pace with the explosive growth of IT. Funds from taxes like FBT should be used for infrastructure growth and urban renewal and to provide incentives to organisations for creation of such facilities.

There has been a lot of inorganic growth in the IT industry over the last year and large Indian IT companies have a lot of financial leverage. India needs to carefully look at merger and takeover norms so that large IT service providers can acquire smaller firms across the globe if there are synergistic gains to be realised.

The author is executive director, PricewaterhouseCoopers.