Confed-ITA discuss online issue with vendors

Confed-ITA conducted a meeting with vendor companies to address the issue of e-commerce in Chennai on 24 February. The spate of online shopping have severely affected channel partners due to their under-priced selling of IT goods.

Confed-ITA in an attempt to demand the ethical selling price of commodities called for a meeting with vendors like Dell, Acer, HP, Asus, Lenovo, Canon, K7 and Epson. The meeting chaired by Confed-ITA president Muthiah Pillai saw participation from FITDAK and AIT-Bangalore also.

Raising the issue of price disparity between online and offline IT commodities members urged vendor companies to take up the issue with immediate effect. Following the meeting both vendors and IT members of south associations have agreed upon a single point of conduct from each of vendor companies to tackle the issue. Also, members of Confed-ITA will form a separate task force to take the issue to the state government of Tamil Nadu.

"We are organizing a special group to discuss the matter with the commercial tax officer and also the tax minister of Tamil Nadu", said C. Arumugam, Seceretary, Confed-ITA. He further added saying, "Like dealers and partners who have to pay VAT e-commerce sites are exempted from this. This is because simply there is no rule as such in the constitution which demands VAT from online portals." He said that Confed-ITA will urge the state government to impose VAT or entry level tax on IT goods sold by e-commerce sites. This he says will bring down the 8-10% price difference which is currently eating away channel business.