I, on behalf of Acer, give full credit to the honourable Finance Minister in balancing various competing requirements and making a couple of bold announcements that benefits the important sectors of education, health and agriculture.

We welcome increased allocation to education and expect this to have a positive result for computer manufacturers. In the same context, I welcome 1 lakh rural information centres, allocations for SWAN and the state data centres. It is a pointer that the Finance Minister appreciates the importance of deeper penetration of IT as a leveraging force for economic development.

We would have liked if minor obstacles such as the following would have been put out of the way for deeper IT penetration. Continuation of 4% special additional duty, which in any case is to be refunded subject to some laborious documentation.

MRP related CVD payment has pushed up IT hardware cost by 4 to 7%. Excise increase on operating system from 8% to 12% that has been newly introduced.

Though some relief has been mentioned on CENVAT and duties for some hardware items, at this time we are not clear what these are. We will have to wait till we are able to see the particular notifications.

We wish Budget 08 would have offered relief to all IT-hardware cost, thereby making them more affordable.