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Paging industry hopeful despite being ignored
Shalini Dagar
New Delhi : Though the paging industry has been ignored by Budget 2001, the industry is still quite hopeful, since it feels that most of the shackles binding the industry are outside the purview of the Budget. And the positive `feel good' factor of the Budget has percolated to them as well. The industry is also expecting the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India's (TRAI) recommendations on the paging industry, due any day now, to address some of these issues. Further, the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) is shortly expected to come out with the waiver of the spectrum (WPC) charges, with effect from the August 1, 1999. The paging operators are currently paying these WPC charges to the government despite not being allowed to collect the same from the subscribers. This is a long-standing demand of the paging industry, since as per the Telecom Tariff Order the DoT has not allowed the players to charge these from the customers from April 1, 1999 onwards. The Budget 2001 has not addressed the single mostimportant demand of the paging industry. According to Mr Praveen Kumar, president, DSS Mobile: "we had a single demand that there be a reduction in effective customs duty by removal or reduction of countervailing duty (CVD) on pagers. That has not been considered." The DoT, too is believed to have recommended the reduction of CVD in case of pagers to zero, since there is no indigenous manufacture, which was ignored, according to industry officials.Copyright © 2001 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
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