AKRUTI CITY ANNOUNCES 900 CRORE INVESTMENT IN CITY
Nilanjana Ghosh Choudhury, May 25, 2009
DNA (Pune edition)
Mumbai-based Akruti City Ltd on Thursday announced that the company would invest Rs 900 crore in different commercial, residential and IT park projects in Pune.
Akruti City Ltd business unit (sales) chief Mayur Shah said that its proximity to Mumbai and being an integral part of the knowledge corridor, Pune was a vibrant place to be in. "Akruti's unique design elements and its eye for detail has found wide acceptance among the discerning people of Pune," he said.
In the residential category, one of their first projects in the city was 'Akruti Countrywoods', which was launched in April this year. Located on Katraj- Kondhwa link road, this is a township project spread over 60 acres.
"Our next project is Akruti Chambers near Swargate. The work on the project has begun in June 2008. It is equipped with all the modern amenities. The next in line is Akruti Sankul, on Tilak Road, the work on which commenced in February last year. With a mechanized car parking, it has shops, office spaces and residential apartments with a total saleable area of 19,304 sq ft. The second phase of the Hinjewadi IT park will be ready by 2011.
SOPS SOUGHT TO AVOID SEZS’ DE-NOTIFICATION
Nayanima Basu, New Delhi, May 25, 2009
Financial Chronicle
With growing requests for de-notification of SEZs by major realty developers, the export promotion council for EoUs and SEZs (EPCES) has urged the government to grant income tax exemption and assign infrastructure status as demanded by the developers to check delays in implementation of these zones.
In a letter to the ministry of commerce and industry, EPCES has urged the government to solve these issues at the earliest to avoid more de-notification requests.
DLF is seeking to surrender four of its SEZs due to the economic downturn and cash crunch. Others such as Reliance and Unitech are seeking extension of deadline beyond the permitted three years.
“The government needs to address some of the issues such as removing the anomaly in section 10 AA, declaring SEZs as infrastructure projects, extending benefits of focused market scheme to exports from SEZs and access to domestic tariff area based on duty forgone basis,” L B Singhal, director general of EPCES, said.
He also said if these long-pending demands were not addressed urgently, there could be further delays in implementing some big SEZs and developers would have no option but to withdraw from the projects. At present, companies such as Infosys, Wipro and Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) that have not floated separate entities to promote units in SEZs do not enjoy 100 percent tax exemption.
Section 10 AA part VII of the Income Tax Act stipulates that profits from an SEZ unit need to be taxed in proportion to the unit's contribution to the company's turnover.
For example, if an SEZ unit exports 50 percent of the company's total turnover, then the exemption on its profit will be calculated on only 50 percent and not 100 percent as per the SEZ Act.