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Pare excise on hardware by 50%, urges Premji

Suggesting that India emulate China and Israel, Wipro chairman Azim H Premji said on Friday that the Centre should bring down the excise duty on hardware from 16 per cent to 8 per cent and the sales tax to zero to give a boost to the sector.

Addressing a national symposium on challenges and opportunities in IT products here, Premji emphasised that to fulfill the prime minister's dream of India becoming an infotech superpower, IT needs to have both components -- hardware and software.

In his key-note address at the symposium, organised by the Manufacturers Association of Information Technology companies, he pointed out that an estimated hardware requirement worth $50 billion was needed to meet the software export target of $87 billion.

The hardware industry did not want import protection, he said. However, the country should follow excise model of self-declaration of exports and imports, and labour laws which are pragmatic and flexible, he added.

Among other measures, excise duty on hardware needs to be brought down from 16 per cent to 8 per cent, and sales tax from 4 per cent to nil over the next two years.

There was a need to have special economic zone positioning for IT units.

China and Israel, he said, had made rapid strides in the hardware sector through good policies and India should draw lessons from the success story in those two countries.

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