Industry seeks PCs, peripherals parity

<div class="section0"><div class="Normal"><span style="" font-size:="">BANGALORE: Computer prices will drop further if the government brings in the widely expected duty-related parity between PCs and peripherals in the forthcoming budget. </span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Such parity would mean slashing of excise duty on inputs or peripherals from 16% to 8%.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">The peripherals (comprising of monitor, keyboard and mouse) constitute around 25-30% of the PC price depending on the configuration.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">The duty slash on these items is likely to bring down PC prices by 2 to 3%.In the January 2004 interim budget, the excise duty was brought down to 8% for PCs, while the duty on inputs and peripherals were kept unchanged at 16%. The industry expects this anomaly would be rectified in the forthcoming budget.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">"Under the current cost structures, it is only the reduction in excise duty that can help improve IT penetration through reduced prices for a price sensitive market like India, especially the home and education sectors," says Vinnie Mehta, president of MAIT, computer hardware industry lobbyist.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">Raghavendra Prakash, chief marketing office of WeP, a leading computer peripherals company, feels parity between PC and peripherals is essential and it will make computers further affordable for end consumers.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">At the same time, the industry is lobbying for 100% depreciation of PCs. MAIT says it will incentivise IT consumption in small and medium businesses and enable corporates to donate used IT products to the education sector.</span><br /><br /><span style="" font-size:="">This will also boost the used PC market in India as corporates would be refreshing their PCs more frequently. Says S Rajendran, general manager (marketing) of Acer, "Given the accelerated product life cycles in IT, it is realistic to enable 100 per cent depreciation.</span></div> </div>