Originally appeared on Sunday Observer
‘Gap in market could be exploited’
The introduction of the Goods and Services Tax (GST) in India from July this year has opened up an array of opportunities for Sri Lanka’s IT services sector to clinch projects from India’s smaller firms in the fields of accountancy and taxation services, a top former Indian bureaucrat said last week.
Speaking in a public virtual conversation with Chairman of the Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, Prof. Razeen Sally, the former secretary to the Ministry of Finance in India, Dr. Narayan said there is a gap in the Indian market where the Sri Lankan IT services industry can exploit because the big IT companies like InfoSys and Tata are so busy with government work and the smaller companies are finding it difficult to get their jobs done.
“There are opportunities for a small software firm, an accounting firm or a tax filing firm to do work virtually for the Smaller and Medium Indian Companies.
All that you need to do is to put out your availability out into the media and say that you are willing to do this work and work will come your way,” said Dr. Narayan, who also served as Economic Advisor to former Indian Prime Minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee said.
He said that in India a lot of tax filing work and others are now being increasingly done online following the introduction of GST in India on 1 July 2017 which replaced multiple cascading taxes levied by the central and state government.
“Large companies like Infosys, Wipro and Tata are handling big government work like driving licenses and vehicle registrations etc. So they are employing thousands of people to handle this while for GST there aren’t enough jobs available,” Dr. Narayan said. Hence, he said that for an ordinary business such a little company out there, they have to figure out the software and file it online.
“People are not available as everybody is busy with big work, while small firms are all blocked up,” said Dr. Narayan, who counts nearly four decades in public service in the State and Central Governments in India. The virtual conversation by Prof. Sally with Dr. Narayan was organized by Advocata, an independent policy think tank based in Colombo and was held at the MAS Innovation Centre.