ITAO postpones IT expo till December

The IT Association of Orissa (ITAO) has decided to postpone its annual IT
exhibition from Feb to Dec 2008. Dayananda Ratho, Secretary, ITAO said, “Our
election was due around last February but due to some unavoidable circumstances,
it was delayed for several months and was held in Sep 2007, wherein the new
office bearers were elected and took charge of the office of ITAO.”

Since the entire process was delayed, the association had very little time in
hand before the IT expo, which ideally should have been conducted by Jan to Feb,
this year. “Since time was short and there were other issues that required
immediate attention by the association, we have decided to postpone it,” he
said.

Last year, the ITAO expo was organized on a small scale and due to shortage
of time, the event was clubbed with the readymade platform of Orissa's Real
Estate Development Association. “This year, we will organize the expo on our
own. Through our past experience, we have learnt that it is always better to
organize the show under our own banner rather than doing it with some other
brand since the response we get is better which also helps to maintain the brand
name of ITAO,” stated Ratho.

Before organizing this mega event, the association plans to organize few
other activities in order to attract and encourage the members. “We are planning
a blood donation camp and one small show on second-hand laptops by this March.
After that, we will organize a workshop on the usage and benefits of Internet
and e-commerce,” informed Ratho.

Meanwhile, ITAO intervened in the issue about one percent entry tax levied on
IT hardware products, which the distributors were not willing to foot. The
distributors of HP and Compaq products used to dissolve this tax while billing
the materials to the partners,” informed Ratho.

However, from November onwards, following HP and Compaq's orders,
distributors suddenly started levying one percent tax in the billing for the
local sub-distributors and dealers. “The tax implemented by distributors without
any proper notice caused more trouble to partners,” he informed.

ITAO resolved the matter amicably with the distributors agreeing to
compensate the taxed amount through some incentives or backend reimbursements.