by Playfuls Staff |
27th July 2006
Public sector spending on information technology is growing strongly across Asia, but a wide gulf exists between the more mature markets and emerging countries, a research agency's study said on Thursday. [more]
In New Zealand and Australia, Springboard Research found that the public sector is spending nearly 200 US dollars per capita on IT, while spending in India and Indonesia amounts to 1 US dollar per capita.
"The degree of difference in IT spending per capita in the public sector across the region is staggering," The Business Times quoted Dane Anderson, vice-president for research, as saying.
The 2005 IT expenditure in Asia-Pacific, excluding Japan, was 17.3 billion US dollars, the study said, with the market forecast to grow at a compound annual rate of 9.5 per cent to 25 billion US dollars by 2009.
New Zealand's public sector, which emerged as the biggest spender on IT relative to its population size, was expected to reach 984.7 million US dollars in 2009 from 821.8 million US dollars from 2005, an annual rate of 4.6 per cent.
Australia's expenditure on public sector IT is likely to grow at an annual rate of 4.4 per cent to reach 4.73 billion US dollars in 2009, followed by Singapore, the third-highest spender in the region.
The city-state was forecast to reach 800 million US dollars at an annual rate of 4.9 per cent.
The research forecast the top three countries would grow slightly faster until 2009 than the second-tier ones, which included Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.
"We anticipate the highest growth will come from the developing countries like India, China, the Philippines, Indonesia and Thailand and these countries will post annual growth rates between 11 and 19 per cent," Anderson was quoted as saying.
© 2006 DPA
