Bollywood disappointed with budget & plans to parade stars in Delh

Hyderabad: Bollywood is thoroughly disappointed with finance minister Arun Jaitley's budget presented in parliament on Saturday.

"The film industry in India is being killed by the government," said J P Chowksey, president, Film Federation of India (FFI). The film industry had asked the government to exempt the film industry from service tax. "Forget exempting us, the service tax has been increased from 12.36 per cent to 14 per cent. This is going to affect the film industry badly at all levels," Chowksey said.

Representatives of the FFI had several meetings with finance ministry officials over the last several months but all that came to nought as no sops were announced for the film industry.
"Since the government does not consider the reasonable demands put forward by a legitimate body of the film industry, we now plan to make our voice heard," Chowksey said. And that would be by mobilising all the stars from Bollywood and regional cinema.

"If Amitabh Bachchan, Rajnikant and many other stars go to Delhi to talk about the issues of the industry, perhaps the government will understand. We will mobilise all the stars," Chowksey said. He also expressed disappointed at the 12 MPs in parliament who have not been able to make the government see reason to develop the film industry.

The FFI president said tax exemptions should have been announced even on importing film equipment. He said what the country needs in a National Film Policy so that the industry will develop uniformly. He pointed out though as per UN standards, the country needs 30,000 film theatres, all it now has is 9,000 single screens. "Where is the encouragement to come up with theatres?' he questioned. He said on an average the collections for the first week for a film were Rs 100 cr but if there were more theatres, the collections could become Rs 1,000 cr. And because of this, the government's revenue would also increase.

The FFI had also pointed out various issues of the film industry to the government. For shooting in a train compartment, the film industry has to give a bank guarantee of Rs one crore and pay Rs 75,000 as rent per day. For shooting on a Mumbai road also Rs 75,000 is charged. However, for shooting in Switzerland, no amount needs to be paid. And for shooting in Paris, all that the producer has to do is inform the local authorities three days in advance so that traffic on the road will be restricted. While there is no encouragement in India, the FFI said the industry was getting better encouragement abroad.

Chowksey said the film federation officials from the South worked out all the details and represented to the government but none of the demands have been met by the government.

"The government holds some film functions and that is only to facilitate the families of politicians and officials to take pictures with the stars," Chowksey said expressing his anger at the government neglecting the film industry in the budget.