State asks civic body to waive octroi on transportation of IT hardware

However,PMC is not willing to provide the exemption which costs around Rs 25 crore annually to the IT industry. Octroi chief Hemant Nikam said Pune is not included in the list of districts for which the IT exemption is applicable. “The government issued a resolution in 2009 specifying the districts which are entitled for Octroi exemption. Under the resolution,only 10 districts of the state are entitled for exemption,” he said.

The industries department has asked the PMC to provide the exemption after the IT industry representatives informed it about non compliance of IT policy. Software Exporters Association of Pune (SEAP,spokesperson Abhijeet Atre said he is not aware of any government resolution which denies the exemptions to Pune. “Under the IT policy,the import of hardware products was to be exempt from payment of octrio and due to non-implementation of the policy,the IT industry is facing major losses,” he said.

Director-general of Mahratta Chamber of Commerce Industries and Agriculture (MCCIA) Anant Sardeshmukh said due to PMC’s refusal to provide the benefit of IT exemption,companies were investing out of the state. “The provision within the IT policy that the companies be provided octroi exemptions has practically become non-operative. It is because of the inertia on the part of the government to implement its own policies that the industry is moving out from Pune to other states,” he said.

Bhagat said that the matter came up for discussion last year when the state was discussing provisions for the new industrial policy with representatives.

Deepak Shikarpur,chairman of IT committee of MCCIA,said PMC was unwilling to provide the IT exemption even as the IT industry spends a large sum of money on corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes in the city. “IT companies as part of their CSR adopt the schools and take up many developmental works. We plan to lead a delegation to the PMC to apprise it about the issue afresh,” he said.