Agra media owners approach Mayor for friendlier norms

The tender floated by Agra Municipal Corporation inviting bids for erecting unipoles in the city has generated mixed reactions from the media owning fraternity. While the civic body’s move to introduce unipoles in the city is viewed as a positive step, the media owners have expressed concerns over the criteria laid down for the bid. In a pre-bid meeting that was organised by Agra Municipal Corporation, the media owners had cited that the minimum business turnover for participating companies, the license fee, and other tax matters were not industry friendly.

Gaurav Agarwal, MD, Agarwal Advertisement Bureau, commented that the civic body’s stated goal of netting Rs 25 crore advertising revenues in the current fiscal as opposed to Rs 3 crore in the previous fiscal is “unrealistic”. “It is good to have standard quality media like in Delhi but they can’t set hefty targets like Delhi. They need to understand the spends of Delhi and Agra which are poles apart.”

Echoing this view, Amerish Nath, Director, Frank Advertisers, said: “The company turnover could not have gone up so much while the civic earned Rs 3 crore. The high minimum turnover makes it unviable for many firms to participate in the tender. Moreover, currently the operating companies don’t have bandwidth to handle such tenders.”

As per industry sources, three reputed national media owners did try to enter the Agra market by participating in the tender, out of which one couldn’t proceed due to their previous dispute with the authority whereas the second one backed out due to the tender terms

Apart from this, the industry is also beset with tax-related issues. Although GST subsumes all other taxes including Advertisement Tax, the authority is apparently placing additional tax demands on the industry along with those that are pending tax payments. And to resolve this, the media owning fraternity has approached the Mayor and Member of Parliament. “They have given the assurance to find a solution to our tax related issues as well as to relax the tender norms so that the industry can survive,” said Gaurav.