Budget expectations from Xerox and Pitney Bowes

Rajat Jain, managing director at Xerox India said, “I am looking forward to this budget for several reasons – but mostly because the global economic environment is calling for important initiatives in India that will lead us to continued growth.

To begin with, the government must continue the good work begun last year - where we moved to a negative list taxation regime for service tax purposes. This has led to overlap of VAT and service tax in certain situations. The FM can look at alleviating this hardship and higher costs for customers as this is against the spirit of GST. Industry has been waiting for the GST regime – and perhaps it is time for some provisions which advance the structure and spirit of GST, to be brought into this budget in the interim.”

He further added, “The precarious global fiscal situation around the globe and adverse forex movement for Indian importers, make it imperative that Government supports the industry with regulatory, tax and trade incentives. We can ill afford to lose the momentum gained in earlier years by not addressing the bottlenecks in our trade ecosystem, in turn allowing other fast emerging economies to capitalize on global opportunities.

Lastly - a conducive environment is imperative today, where ecosystem players come together to promote citizen benefits in sectors such as healthcare, education , IT and telecom, power and infrastructure. Budgetary allocations and policy reforms promoting local innovation, greater collaboration between industry players and the government and creating an environment for new investments in key development sectors is the need of the hour.”

“The time for action is now – and the budget is an indicator of government sentiment and investments in enabling what I believe should be inclusive growth – both social as well as economic – in this vast nation.

The Indian printing (and allied) industry is the fastest growing in the world. Forward looking  policies that drive greater efficiency via improved raw material procurement and technology deployments are critical to ensuring sustained growth – and wider impact across both large and small business segments in our growing economy,” he concluded.

K M Nanaiah, managing director, Pitney Bowes India, opined that, “Globally, the economic condition is a little uncertain. In India, we look forward to decisive measures to boost our economic growth by facilitating domestic demand and development. The mail and logistics industry in particular, needs an enabling infrastructure that will help streamline and fuel growth in this industry. Technology plays a key role and reducing tariff barriers on new technology induction will provide the necessary impetus.”

In an earlier poll, PrintWeek India asked industry professionals as to what announcement about the Indian print industry would they like to hear from the budget session on 28 February 2013.

The abolition of anti-dumping duty had always been a sensitive topic among the printing fraternity. The industry voiced their opinion with 47 % of the votes in favour of the removal of anti-dumping duty.

With the second highest votes being received by "special industry status for print", the industry feels the importance of print needs to be better highlighted.