An ECP meeting was held with Meredydd Evans, Senior Staff Scientist, Joint Global Change Research Institute, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) to discuss the Energy Conservation Building Code (ECBC) Seminar organized in Visakhapatnam. This seminar was held to promote ECBC awareness in Vizag and provide recommendations on code adoption and implementation. The Vishakhapatnam Urban Development Authority (VUDA) and U.S. Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) jointly organized this seminar at Vizag and as well as one at GIFT city Gujarat. ECP members have expressed interest in these two cities for ECBC promotion activities and intend to engage with the Department of Energy and its labs for their other upcoming programs for ECBC promotion in other cities i.e. Ahmedabad and Delhi going forward.

The American Chamber of Commerce Eastern Region organised the live screening of the Budget Speech by the Hon’ble Finance Minister at ‘The Bengal Club’ on 29th February 2016. The budget speech was attended by AmCham members viz industrialist from various sectors and tax experts from the Big Four.

Mr. Dinesh Agarwal (Chairman of AmCham Eastern Region and Partner, Tax & Regulatory Services, Ernst & Young LLP) welcomed the members and post the budget speech by the Finance Minister, invited reactions of members from industry. The overall reaction of the members was that there is much talk about “Make in India” and the Finance Minister’s proposal to provide benefit of tax free initial years for the start-ups and reduced rate of corporate tax for new manufacturing companies would provide support to the initiative. Moreover, the focus of the budget was majorly on the agricultural sector including benefits for farmers and social sector and spending on these two priorities should result in increase in employment.

In addition to the above comments, experts from the Big Four shared their views on personal tax, corporate tax, international tax, and indirect tax proposals.

On the direct tax front, as per Mr. Dinesh Agarwal, “The introduction of POEM which was likely to be introduced from 1 April 2015 has been deferred for one year which is a good move. He also mentioned that the intention of the government is to take more tax from super rich which is evident from increase in rate of surcharge on super rich individual from 12% to 15% and levy of 10% tax on individuals having dividend income of more than INR 10 lakhs.” Though the above were the first reaction and observations on the Finance Minister’s speech, Mr .Dinesh Agarwal said that to know the intricacies of the above proposals, the fine print need to be seen.

On the indirect tax proposals, Mr. Pulak Saha shared his views and summed up the list of items which would now become expensive like cigarettes, SUV cars, branded clothes, etc.

The event was concluded with the vote of thanks by Mr. Suranjan Bhanja.

AMCHAM Defense Committee members met to take action on the points raised by Joint Secretary DOMW, Shri Harbans Lal Khera, during the meeting with AMCHAM members on 23rd February 2016. The members discussed submitting a detailed recommendation to the ministry with the focus on the multiplier suggestion to encourage investment and indigenization.

AMCHAM Defense Committee members met with Mr. Harbans Lal Khera, Joint Secretary, Defense Offsets Management Wing, to discuss in detail recommendations submitted by the AMCHAM Defense Committee on amendments to DPP 2013. The Joint Secretary requested for more clarification on multiplier suggestions proposed by the team.

The committee for the healthcare conference, slated to be held on 16th September, met at Eli India Global Services, Hi Tech City on 22nd February 2016 to discuss and brainstorm on the theme and the areas we would like to see addressed. The members decided to broaden the base to include pharma and life sciences too. Deliberation is still on, for the theme which would be either – global integration with the sub theme relating to epidemic or epidemic with the sub theme relating to global integration – end stage life threatening diseases (capture and slow down progress of the disease) covering bio similar, data integrity and quality.

AMCHAM was a supporting partner for the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) organized National Conference on Export Controls in Bangalore. The event brought together the major business entities handling defense, dual-use items and technologies, the relevant Government of India officials including from MEA and DGFT, as well as export control experts from the U.S., Japan and German to discuss the SCOMET export control system, recent updates to SCOMET and India’s engagement with the multilateral export control regimes (Nuclear Suppliers Group, Missile Technology Control Regime, Wassenaar Arrangement and Australia Group).