Whose IT budget has been hit the hardest?

While the debate over bankers' bonuses may still be generating headlines, it seems the financial services industry has found one way to cut back - slash IT budgets.

Financial services firms' IT budgets fell by 8.3 per cent between 2008 and 2009, meaning the banks have cut their budgets more than other industries, and saw spending fall by 6.8 per cent year-on-year.

Financial services is not making the steepest cuts, however: that honour goes to the agriculture mining and construction industry with a 9.2 per cent year-on-year fall, followed by the discrete manufacturing industry with an 8.5 per cent drop, according to research by analyst house Gartner.

While most industries have not had to curb their spending to such a degree, all the industries surveyed by Gartner saw their budgets reined in to some extent: retail experienced a fall of 7.2 per cent, for example, with transportation down eight per cent.

Not all sectors were so hard hit - government organisations saw their budgets decrease by a relatively modest 3.6 per cent, the smallest decline among the industries.

According to Gartner, spending growth will return next year with a bump in IT budgets of 2.3 per cent year-on-year with "sustained, positive growth" on the cards for 2011.