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Moumita Bakshi Chatterjee

New Delhi, Oct 3 Nasscom today announced the appointment of Mr Som Mittal as its new President. Mr Mittal takes over at a time when fears of rupee appreciation and the scheduled end to the STPI scheme in 2009, are weighing on the industry. Business Line spoke to Mr Mittal as he prepares to deal with the challenges facing the industry. Excerpts:

Your appointment comes at a time when the industry is facing issues like wage inflation, rupee appreciation and has been seeking an extension of the STP scheme. How do you plan to take up these issues?

We never get easy jobs even in the corporate world. I knew that there will be no easy time. What helps is that I am almost not an external hire.

I am a part of Chairman’s Council and Executive Council, where we keep discussing these issues. All these issues are addressable.

In my view, there are three important roles we play as an industry association. First, is influencing the environment around us so that they are aligned with us.

For instance, we talk to the Government on issues like STP and currency appreciation, and also work with Governments outside India on issues like visa.

We also work closely with the industry on their response to issues. We need to prepare ourselves…

Now that we are a part of the global world there will be events around the world, which will impact us. We just have to ensure that we respond to these issues, effectively.

The second role is to ensure that the industry prepares itself in the long run. While our industry has done well, it is still nascent – and there are industry segments which are more vulnerable. So there are times, we will need help from the Government and their understanding.

The third big area for us is the impact we are making on the society.

To see how can we take the work done in IT, to the masses. We are doing a lot of work on this, through the Nasscom Foundation. Other issues of importance are data security, data privacy, cyberlaws and piracy.

What, according to you, is the most critical issue for the industry which would need your immediate attention? How do you see the rupee impacting the sector?

From the point of view of small companies, getting hit by a 15 per cent currency rise and not having all the levers of increasing prices – is a big issue.

I am sure the industry will find solution but it needs relief.

We need time to prepare. Countries like China have stepped in to protect their industry. We know that there are different demands that Government has, but the export industry and what it contributes has a balancing requirement.

With less than four months to go for the Union Budget, what is Nasscom’s wish-list?

We have a CFO forum, where we take inputs from all companies. Budget has two aspects – policy and tax issues. We need to be working on both. Typically, we take inputs from companies.

As an agile industry, we need to make sure that the processes become simpler. As the Government introduces new taxes like fringe benefit tax (FBT) and Minimum Alternative Tax , it brings up new issues, as interpretations are different.

There are aspects of intent and execution – we need to work on both, to ensure that the intent of the Government gets implemented.

One major area for the sector, of course, will be extension of the STP scheme. Also with regard to service tax and FBT, it is not that as an industry we do not want to pay those taxes – it is just that the process need to be simple.

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