Mr Sinha will present the budget for fiscal 2001-02 to Parliament on February 28. A section of software professionals, however, believe that the budget is a "profit loss accounting exercise" for the government and except for some crucial procedural changes, nothing much should be expected. "Why should all policy related matters be dovetailed only on that single day. There is so much you can do on a continuous basis. That's the reason why the software sector is not that excited," Anand Sudarshan, CEO of Planetasia.com, told IANS. "Today, life is run on quarters. You have seen what happens on Nasdaq ... how can I wait till February 28 of next year for something substantial to happen? The key issue is responding as per requirements of the industry," he said. Some professionals have adopted the "leave us alone" mantra in the wake of what is described as the "seminal budget" of last year when the industry, registered with special export zones, got a 10-year tax holiday. But this mantra is with three or fourfundamental exceptions. And all of them relate to procedures, the bane of government policy-making. "Definitely, custom bonding is a major issue so far as procedures go. The announcement was made in the last budget, but the notification is yet to be issued," says Mohandas Pai, director and chief finance officer, Infosys Technologies. This is crucial because industry growth is affected by five to eight per cent annually because of this one single factor, say analysts. "It's a whole lot of complex paper work. We are allowed to import capital equipment duty free.

But, to do this, we need to get approval from the STPI (Software technology parks of India) and the customs. What happens is that we get the clearance from the STPI, but not the customs. We need to appoint agents to deal with this and time and energy take their toll on growth," says Rostow Ravanan, head, financial solutions of MindTree Consulting. "Custom bonding is one of the issues. Actually there are several others. But the software sector definitely needs clarification on the employees stock options issue (Esops), so that we can manage our intellectual capital, the people, better," adds Sudarshan. The industry has held the view that Esops should not be taxed at the time of grant, but taxed as capital gains at the time of the sale by the employee. But, all of them agree that the key issue is infrastructure particularly in communication.

India Abroad News Service