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Journalism of Courage
JALANDHAR, MAY 8: Even as cricket lovers across the country get caught in World Cup fever, cricket bat manufacturers in this city are on verge of either closing shop or shifting business elsewhere, thanks to a recession triggered by a `flawed taxation regime’, among other factors.
An umbrella organisation of manufacturers of cricket bats and other sports goods, Sports Forum, today said the makers of bats in particular and other sports goods in general should be exhilarated by the World Cup hype but they were busy ruing their fate as customers make a beeline for other trade centres like Meerut and Jammu.
“The biggest problem we are facing is the non-availability of Kashmir willow clefts as their movement out of Jammu and Kashmir has been banned by the state government,” sports forum president Ravinder Dhir told PTI here.
He said over 60 per cent of bat manufacturers in the city had shifted their operation to the Himalayan state and bring finished bats here which are then sold after putting on the brandstickers. “This makes the bat costlier than what the manufacturers in Jammu offer for,” he added.
Forum chairman J C Kohli said manufacturers here were also placed disadvantageously due to the three per cent sales tax in the state on sports goods. “Sports goods manufacturers in Jammu and Kashmir are exempt from all sales tax besides availing of highly subsidised power rates,” Kohli said, adding Meerut, Jalandhar’s main rival in the trade, has two per cent sales tax rate.
At present, willow is being brought here illegally and the fact is probably one of the worst kept secrets, the sports goods manufacturers said.
“In fact, Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Farooq Abdullah had assured us in a meeting with trade representatives last August that the ban would be revoked but so far nothing has been done,” they said.
All repeated pleas to Abdullah have failed to evoke any response, they said adding, even Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal was approached for taking up the issue.
“Former PrimeMinister I K Gujral had written to Abdullah and Badal but without any result,” they said.
The list of woes of the sports goods industry is seemingly endless. While the sector was exempted from the condition of `C form’ after a long drawn struggle, the sales tax on sports goods was raised to three per cent from the earlier two with retrospective effect.
“The government hiked the rate of sales tax through a notification issued on March 12, ’99, which was effective from August 13, 1998. Now, how can we go about recovering one per cent extra tax from all the customers who made purchases in the last so many months ?” Dhir asked.
Dhir said the total amount of this extra one per cent tax comes to Rs 7 lakh, “not the kind of sum for which hundreds of sports goods manufacturers should be put to such harassment.”
With big companies entering sponsoring in a big way and top players often seen with bats carrying their logos, demand for such bats has risen. “This is harming the trade because none of thesponsors are into bat manufacturing but traders are putting the sponsors stickers on their bats to attract customers,” Dhir said. Senior superintendent of police Gaurav Yadav said many firms were raided last week and hundreds of spurious bats and other sports goods worth at least Rs 1 crore were seized.
He said these goods were being passed off to gullible traders from southern India under well known brand names.
Sanjay Kohli, a well known hockey stick maker, said unless tax was brought down to two per cent and ban on movement of willow cleft and cane etc were removed, the sports goods industry was doomed for permanent recession which had already lasted several years now.
