Addressing a press conference, the MAIT director, Mr Vinnie Mehta said that the industry is looking forward to a favourable Exim policy for the hardware sector this year. "Setting up of SEZs for the hardware sector and modifications of Electronic Hardware Technology Park (EHTP) schemes are our key expectations," he said.

Mr Mehta said that the Government should set up special economic zones for hardware and there should not be any condition for the net foreign exchange to be positive. Moreover, the restriction on minimum area of 1,000 acres should also be removed in the interests of setting up more such zones.

``Hardware units do not require such huge land for their production facilities,'' he added.

Similarly, the EHTP scheme should also be modified to dispense with the net foreign exchange positive condition. However, the industry does not need any concessions for its domestic sales.

Dispensing with net foreign exchange positive condition would accord the necessary flexibility to the entrepreneurs to decide the market-domestic or international-in which they want to sell. Moreover, Mait recommended that the concessional access to the domestic market access may be withdrawn to ensure that the Government does not lose any revenue due to free import of inputs and components, said Mr Mehta.

Addressing the issue of the duty structure on hardware, Mr Mehta said that the import of finished IT products would have zero duty by 2003, as per WTO norms. The concern is that if the duty levels are not brought down on non-IT input components such as plastics, metal parts and chemicals-currently, they attract between 15 to 35 per cent duty-the local IT manufacturing will become unviable in India. ``We hope the Government to take some initiative in this regard,'' he said.

Mr Mehta also said that the industry is also facing unduly high transaction time related to clearance of consignments for imports and exports. "We are expecting simplification of procedures in this regard to survive in the market as IT products have a very short shelf life and need to be delivered usually in just-in-time delivery mode," he added.

MAIT also expects some of the labour laws related issues to be addressed in Exim policy such as flexibilities in contract employments, working hour restrictions per day etc.