Government IT spending in India to touch $7 billion this year: Report

MUMBAI: Global consultancy firm Gartner today said Indian government will see a marginal 3.1 per cent uptick in the IT spend at $ 7 billion for 2016.

"The government in India will spend $ 7 billion on IT products and services in 2016," it said in a note.

This includes spending on internal services, software, IT services, data centre, devices and telecom services by local, state and Union governments, it said.

IT services which include consulting, software support, business process outsourcing, IT outsourcing, implementation, and hardware support is expected to grow at 8.8 per cent in 2016 to $ 1.6 billion, it said.

Interestingly, it said the BPO segment will be growing at a whopping 22 per cent.

The estimate showing a marginal uptick in IT spends comes amid a greater thrust on technology from the government, which has launched the high-octane Digital India initiative.

"The 'Digital India' initiative continues to be driving investments in the government, led by access of government services on mobile devices (part of the mobile government), and expansion on broadband services," its principal research analyst Moutusi Sau said.

Without giving any indication about how it compares with the last year's number, Gartner said telecom services will be a $ 1.5 billion market.

Within the telecom segment, mobile network services will post the fastest growth of 3.5 per cent to be a $ 193 million opportunity in 2016, it said.

Led by growth in infrastructure, the government spending on software will grow by 9.9 per cent to $ 938 million in 2016, she said.