Competition 'monopolist'
Economic Times, August 31, 2004

The item "Service Tax Credit Against Excise Rules Notified" (ET, August 20) by Mr Arun Goyal portrayed CMC in a bad light and is baseless.

CMC Ltd has run the centre for 8 years, still continues to, and is committed to excellence. Thus the following is our take on Mr Goyal's story.

He calls "CMC, the monopoly agency in charge of the service centre for filing import and export documents in ports"; but CMC got the award via an open tender floated by Indian Customs and Central Excise, to run service centres India-wide.

Only after the invited bids got openly evaluated, as per government guidelines, were we awarded the contract, with effect from April 1, 2004. Let me highlight that this open competitive bidding process fetched 40% higher remittances for the government.

Then Mr Goyal says, "CMC has raised the service charges with the approval of the customs department"; but it is not CMC (the executing agency) but the Indian Customs and Excise department that decides on service charges.

Finally, Mr Goyal writes "Now that CMC is no longer a 'trusted' agency in the government, after the transfer of control to the Tatas, there is no valid reason for monopoly.

Service centres should be licensed to anyone with a track record free of corruption." But CMC has, in fact, been associated with some of the largest national IT projects for more than 25 years.

It is known, too, for its track record of ethical business conduct, which has got it its big and loyal customer base. These facts provide a true and fair picture of CMC.

S V Ramanan
Head (HR, IIS & Corp Communications)
CMC