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CII ASCON summit 2021 : Key suggestions for the IT-BPM sector

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CII Associations’ Council (ASCON) is an important forum of CII which brings together National level Associations from across sectors on a common platform. Every year, an ASCON summit is organised. NASSCOM led the industry engagement for the IT-BPM sector in the ASCON summit 2021.

As part of this summit, we conducted a sectoral roundtable with industry members to discuss the key issues faced by the sector and to arrive at the recommendations to be made to the Government. 

The key suggestions are provided below.

  1. Investment
  • SEZ: Ease existing norms to avail tax deduction in 11-15 years by allowing deduction of expense on cloud infrastructure.
  • Review Custom duties for import of chips which are designed in India. Grants for new R&D centers for first 3 years to cover 20%-25% of overall R&D cost.
  • Data Governanace : Finalize Personal Data Protection legislation. Non-Personal Data framework needs wider & deeper deliberation. Scope of PDP Bill need not be widened to include NPD.
  1. Cost of doing business
  • Transfer Price: Reduce Transfer Price markup requirements. Increase revenue threshold to avail safe harbour regime to 500 cr. from 200 cr.
  • GST : Include IT/ITeS/Online information & database access or retrieval (OIDAR) in notified goods/services.
  1. Ease of doing business
  • Long term WFH for SEZ units : Enable long term hybrid model for units in SEZ
  • Public procurement: Enable alternate mechanism to determine local content of software products to count product development efforts of MNCs which create employment through R&D centres in India.
  • Treat empanelled Cloud Service Providers as Class-I supplier as they offer service from data centers in India and ensures Government data resides in India.
  1. Trade
  • SEIS: Extend SEIS to next 5 yrs. Cover services rendered through emerging technology (ex: AR/VR)
  • Broaden Market Access Initiative Scheme to cover small digital services exporters.
  • Set-up Digital Trade Export Promotion Fund to educate & reward micro/small value exporters 
  • Dedicated e-commerce export promotion cells 
  • Extend Benefits under Niryat Bandhu Scheme for MSME e-commerce exporters 
  1. Technology & R&D
  • Introduce a program to provide matching grants to industry led consortium engaged in joint R&D

 

  1. Job creation and Skills
  • Fast track implementation of the New Education Policy (NEP) 2020. 

Post the roundtable, there was a report back session where NASSCOM made a presentation of the key recommendations to the Minister of Commerce.