Economic Times reports that the Vodafone Group CEO Vittorio Colao, who had in September last year stated that doing business in India was “complicated”, said he sees positive signs at high levels. Asked if it has become easier to do business in India since Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government took office, he said, “Things are moving and this is positive.”
Colao said that he was pleased with the decision of allowing trading and sharing of scarce telecom spectrum as well as “different posture on what was [an] aggressive tax environment” in the past. “Today one message I can give you is, we are seeing a new India. Is it visible in the every aspect of our business? No, it’s not but it’s starting to be visible in enough places. If the pace continues, digitization of the country will happen,” he told reporters.
Vodafone India managing director & CEO Sunil Sood said the present government has been far more cooperative on the call drops issue. “We never had that kind of cooperation ever before. That’s a big change in attitude.” The Minister for Telecom, Ravi Shankar Prasad, has been publicly busting the myth of electromagnetic frequency radiation emanating from telecom towers, and this was a big positive for Vodafone, Sood added.
The Bombay High Court recently set aside an order of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal which had ruled that Income Tax had the powers to raise tax demand on the company in a $2.6 billion (Rs 8,500 crore) transfer pricing case of FY ‘08.
