Indian and Chinese companies see themselves as the "most aggressive" in the Asia-Pacific region in adopting information technology (IT), said a research house survey.

Indian companies were found with the highest average number of full-time IT staff.

IT capital spending, expressed as a percentage of a company's revenue, ranged from a low of 0.8% in Australia to a high of 1.7% in China, higher than the 1.2 percent seen in North America, said Gartner in its 2006-2007 IT Spending and Staffing Report.

Only 8% of respondents in Singapore said they were aggressive in adopting IT, the second lowest among the six Asia-Pacific countries surveyed.

Companies in the region generally spend 1.4% of their revenue on IT operations, compared with 2.6% in the US.

The average Singapore operation has an IT operating budget of 1.8 % of revenues compared with 1.2% of the average Malaysian and South Korean firms, according to the findings.

"Asia-Pacific IT organisations must take advantage of opportunities to apply good practices from experiences elsewhere around the world because, in general, they lag in IT adoption," Singapore's Business Times quoted analyst John Roberts as saying.

IANS