Pikom, the National ICT Association of Malaysia, is proposing that ICT products be exempted from the upcoming goods and services tax (GST) which will be implemented in April next year.
Although ICT products are currently zero-rated (not taxable), Pikom advisor Woon Tai Hai said prices are expected to go up once GST of 6% is implemented across the board.
However, the impact might be minimal, as the market is highly competitive, he added.
Speaking to the press at the sixth Pikom Leadership Summit, Pikom chairman Cheah Kok Hoong said that the association also expects GST to spur the tech industry, as it will create a demand for new software and hardware.
Themed Breaching the New Frontiers in the Digital Age, the 2014 Pikom Leadership Summit saw the gathering of 250 industry experts to share their thoughts on various business related issues, emerging industry trends and market challenges.
“Today, the summit no longer centres on just ICT, but it’s used to generate information to enrich human life and society, as reflected in our ICT Strategic Review 2014/2015,” said Cheah. ICT Strategic Review is Pikom’s annual report on the local ICT landscape.
The association pointed out that Malaysia’s ICT market is on target to generate RM95bil in revenue by 2017 while ICT market spending is set to achieve double digit growth for this year based on the healthy GDP growth for the first half of 2014.
Another significant trend — the Internet of Things (IoT)— has been identified as the newest revenue driver for the local ICT sector, alongside other trends such as Big Data, Cloud technology and Social Business which are expected to transform the industry.
Cheah said Asia is currently the largest regional IoT market in the world, accounting for 40% of the world’s 189 million machine-to-machine (M2M) connections at the end of 2013. IoT is expected to increase the demand for communication devices and sensors.
Gartner predicted that there will be as many as 25 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2015 and 50 billion devices by 2020 while the market value is expected to go up to US$2tril (RM6.43tril) globally by 2020.
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