Indian products no longer recognised as cheap
on February 16th, 2008 at 10:52 amCHENNAI: Indian products are no longer recognised as ‘cheap Indian products’ across the world, thanks to the successful transformation of India Inc, Subodh Bhargava, Chairman, Tata Communications, said on Friday.
The country, however, needed to address challenges like clarity, increasing competitivess, enjoying change, governance, leadership and competencies, he said, delivering the keynote address at the Madras Management Association (MMA) Annual Convention 2008 here today.
“We are running a marathon. We have to stay the whole course and cannot afford to become complacent or arrogant. The world is changing faster, products change, consumer needs are changing… we should be able to manage it in a better way and enjoy the process of managing change over a long period,” he said.
Bhargava said while Indian companies were becoming successful at innovation, the union government should also look at innovating. “Whatever the industry does will not be sustainable unless the government delivers, especially on infrastructure. The government keeps on promising, but does nothing,” he said.
He said corporate India had to take risks and strategise to own and control the supply chain.
On one hand, Commerce Department’s refrain has been that without suitable tax concessions, developers would not invest and that corporate tax concessions apply to export incomes, while on the other questions have been raised by the Finance Ministry, RBI, IMF, WTO and OECD about “financial feasibility of the scheme”.
According to the Finance Ministry estimates, revenue loss from SEZs could be over 25 billion dollars, more than the earlier estimate of 23 billion dollars for the period 2007-10. “Nevertheless, should revenue losses become too great there is a risk that the government could reverse the policy and reduce exemptions,” the study said.
However, the study goes on to add that a pick up in organised sector employment arising from the new SEZs should lead to improved tax administration which could partly offset losses due to tax concessions. So far, more than 600 SEZs have been cleared, of which 187 have been notified.
Source : PTI
