TOI reported that the India government recently gave in principle approval to DLF to denotify 4 of its IT, ITES Special Economic Zones, which the company did not want to build because of the slowdown in the real estate business.
However, the denotification will be subject to the condition that DLF returns all the tax benefits that it had taken from the centre to build those SEZs.
It is learnt that Mr GK Pillai the BoA, headed by commerce secretary allowed more time to the K Raheja group to build its tax free zones in Goa, Hyderabad and Navi Mumbai. A senior official said that the denotification will be issued only after the development commissioners of respective states give the certificate that all the tax benefits that the company had taken has been refunded.
A company does not pay any taxes on the inputs like cement, steel and any other materials required to develop a SEZ. In the case of denotification, all the tax benefits has to be returned to the government.
Addressing the Board of Approval members, the chairman informed that so far 568 formal approvals have been granted for setting up of SEZs out of which 315 have been notified. He further informed that over INR 1,08,903 crore have been invested in the SEZs during this short span of time and direct employment of the order of 3,87,439 persons has been generated in the SEZs. It total export of INR 99,689 crore have been made from SEZs during the financial year 2008-09 registering a growth of about 50% over the exports made during the year 2007-08.
Meanwhile, the approvals have been granted 3 Biotech SEZs one each in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharashtra, 3 IT/ITES SEZs in Kerala, one each in Karnataka and Maharashtra. In-Principle Approvals are given to multi product
SEZ in Andhra Pradesh and multi services SEZ in Maharashtra.
Source : TOI