A consistent delay in the approval of the highly critical Goods and Services tax bill in the year 2015 has again pushed it on top of the ‘expectations’ list of the IT channel community in the year 2016. ”Obviously a green signal to the GST bill from the parliament is our key expectation from the ongoing year which should happen without any further delay,” says Devesh Agarwal, Managing Director, Compusoft advisors elaborating the key expectations of the channel industry from the ongoing year. Aligning with his tone, Ranjan Chopra, Chairman, Team Computers states that petty politics has concluded in an indefinite delay of the GST Bill thereby hampering the industry’s growth. ”I don’t think GST will be given a nod in the parliament anytime soon. Its unfortunate that the IT channel community has fell victim to vicious politics,” said Chopra. The Bill, which packs in numerous benefits for the business community including levying of taxes only at the destination point and an equal distribution of taxes between manufacturing and services, was tabled in the parliament in August 2015 has stuck amid a political embroil since then. And while a lot of initiatives have been announced by the majority won government including Make in India, Building 100 smart cities, Digital India plan etc. to spur the IT and manufacturing growth in the country, the channel community is still skeptical with a significant lack of transparent policies to transform these ambitious projects into a downright reality. ”While we can witness a lot of policy announcements, there still prevails a lot of uncertainty as to how will they be implemented efficiently in a transparent framework,” adds Agarwal. On the vendor front, the channel industry believes that with rapid advancements in the cloud and mobility space, a new set of policies are expected to come up in the year 2016 which aligns to a win-win proposition for both OEMs(Original Equipment Manufacturers) s well as re sellers. ”Bridging the gap between the vendors and the end consumers will require a new set of innovative policies for the channel community to serve better to their customers and ensuring a collaborative growth,” added Agarwal. The industry also believes that mobility and cloud will continue to dominate the channel space in the year 2016 as the penetration of smart devices (smartphones and tablets) is expected to surge many folds in the coming times. ”Mobile apps will drive a lot of growth and new MVAS companies will emerge. Analytics will also pave its way from corporate giants to small businesses,” stated Chopra.
