IT spending in India to hit $94 bn in 2020: Gartner

 Information technology spending in India is expected to hit $94 billion in 2020, which is a 6.6% increase from $88.5 in 2019, according to a forecast by research firm Gartner. 

 “2020 will be a rebound year for India’s IT spending as consumers return to purchasing mobile phones after sitting on the sidelines in 2019,” said John David Lovelock, research vice president at Gartner.

IT spending will increase from 6% in 2019  to 9% in 2020, helping growth across all segments, Lovelock said. 

The announcement was made at the sidelines of the Gartner IT symposium at Goa.

Increased spending in enterprise application software, which is predicted to hit a 17% growth rate in 2020, will drive the growth in software expenditure. Enterprises are also expected to spend more on mobile phones by 16% in 2020, which would propel the growth in the devices segment from minus 2.4% in 2019 to 6.3% in 2020. 

Lovelock said that he had initially expected the IT spending to drop due to consumer spending has seen a dip in 2019.  

Arup Roy, research vice president at Gartner, said that businesses had shown resilience and continued investments in IT despite the economic slowdown. 

“In mid-2019, the Indian government introduced corporate tax cuts, along with policies that were aimed at reviving the economy and bolstering consumer spending,” pointed out Roy.

Owing to the rate cuts, corporate spending on software and services noticed a gain as companies continued to invest in the areas of automation, digital, cloud and analytics, Roy added.

 IT spending will increase in the next three year sas the goods and services tax  implementation bears fruit and policies which support consumer spending come into effect, Roy said. 

Gartner had recently said that end user spending on cloud services in India will increase by 25% to touch $3.4 billion in 2020. The double- digit growth will position India in third place for end-user spending on public cloud services, right after China and Indonesia.