Customs duty is no longer the issue. The tariffs for customs is 15 percent now, will be reduced to 10 percent next year and the 2005 budget time will find it on the zero scale. The problem for the IT hardware industry remains domestic tariffs,” said Vinnie Mehta, Executive Director,MAIT.
Speaking at the IT session of the India US High Technology Co-operation Group’s second industry meeting held on November 19, 2003, Mehta said that almost 32 percent of cost is added to products due to do-mestic tariffs, including excise duties, sales tax, turnover tax and others. He reiterated that it was important for the govern-ment to realize the price sensi-tive nature of the technology that was being dealt with and work to bring down the inci-dence of domestic tariffs.
In defense of the statement, a representative of the Ministry of Finance from the audience said that the industry should give consideration to the $ 20 billion in revenue that the government made every year from excise collection and consider ways of replacing that loss if excise is removed.
He added that the nation-wide implementation of VAT, which might be implemented from April 1, 2004, would do away with most of the pro-blems with domestic tax.
The importance of bringing in manufacturing by MNCs to the country and how that is possibly only by achieving scale in the domestic market, which in turn was related to the tariff structure, were other topics touched upon during the discussion.
“Today’s venture capitalism does not allow for gestation. You either have to be billio-naires within a year or you are not worth much. That kind of attitude puts an immense amount of pressure on the scie-ntist to deliver. And nanotech-nology is no different,” said Dr Rudra Pratap, Associate Pro-fessor, Indian Institute of Science
(IISc).
“In the next five years, nano-technology alone will need close to one million trained pe-ople. The only way to meet that kind of
manpower needs is to make a concerted effort as a group. Additionally, acad-emia has to look at bridge programs, between education and indu-stry, to provide adequate train-ing for people interested in nanotechnology,” he added.
Speaking on nanotechno-logy as a fast emerging techno-logy during the session, other speakers discoursed on the areas in which the particular technology would be of great use to India including agricul-ture, power and healthcare.
CyberMedia News Service