MUMBAI: The Indian Society of Advertisers (ISA) recently held its annual general meeting (AGM) for the year ending March 2004 at the Y B Chavan Memorial Center.

The chairman of the Executive Committee Bharat V Patel (P&G), speaking on the occasion, recapped some of the major actions taken by the ISA during the year in the advertisers and consumers.

During pre-budget discussions for 2004-05, the ISA in conjunction with the FICCI made a strong case to the Government that all service taxes on inputs (including advertising, promotion, market research etc.) should be allowed to be set off against CENVAT paid by manufacturers.

The earlier dispensation allowed service tax paid on inputs to be set off only against service tax payable on output. This left manufacturers with no set off provision and was resulting in a cascading effect on consumer product prices, to the detriment of the consumers.

The Government acknowledged this and has allowed the proposal made by the ISA, which is in consonance with the stated long-term objective of the Government to converge towards a single GST, rather than have various different types of taxes. The ISA had also helped by suggesting the procedures to be followed for availing the set-offs, informed an official release.

Patel also thanked members for their support to the activities organised by the ISA directorate, which included organising workshops and training programmes for members as well as the publication of the ISA quarterly magazine, Nutshell.

While proposing the resolution for the nomination of the new Executive Council, Patel highlighted the long and invaluable contribution made by the senior most member of the Council, Jagdish Chopra (TCS) and proposed that he be made a permanent member of the Council. This was unanimously supported by the General Body.

The office bearers nominated to the Executive Council for the next term are Bharat V Patel (P&G), who was elected as the chairman, Kurush Grant (ITC), who was elected as vice chairman East, Bijou Kurien (Titan) who was elected vice chairman South, Virat Mehta (Nestle), who was elected vice chairman North, Dalip Sehgal (HLL) who was elected chairman of the Media Committee and Romit Chaterji (Tata Services) who was elected Hon Treasurer.

The other members nominated to the Executive Council are Hamid Ahmed (Hamdard), J R Anklesaria (J L Morison), Ashok Capoor (Herbertsons), D Datta (Crompton Greaves), Paulomi Dhawan (Raymond), Rajiv Dube (Tata Motors), Vinay Hegde (Colgate), K Kadhiravan (Sara Lee), Naveen Kshatriya (Castrol), Jagmohan Malhotra (Enterprise for New Directions), Rajiv Pal (Birla VXL), R Ramakrishnan (Bajaj Electricals) and Brahm Vasudeva (Hawkins).