The Maharashtra Chamber of Housing Industry (MCHI)-CREDAI has set up a four-member committee to look for the best option for developers to compute Value Added Tax (VAT) and, in turn, pass it on to buyers who purchased flats between 2006 and 2010.
Office architecture in Indian cities has improved significantly during the last decade, in terms of aesthetics, sustainability, scale and amenities that it provides to the occupiers. There is a growing demand from occupiers towards better amenities at the workplace.
Till the ‘90s and even early years of the last decade, commercial real estate was being built as just another asset class to be leased out to entrepreneurs who would start or expand business as and when required. Most office buildings were largely built in the central business districts of various cities, functioning primarily as the central node where most of the commercial activity of the city took place.
Realty sector may appear to be bullish and project that downside is over with rosy forecast ahead, yet the decline in fortune is far from being over. As a matter of fact, the learning in the last four years has made most of the leading players to restructure their project portfolio and shed the flab.
SEZ was originally conceived on the premises that it will be like an “Island of Excellence” with world class infrastructure available to the user at globally competitive prices. It was aimed to assist both Indian entrepreneurs as well as global investors wanting to set up their manufacturing and services bases inIndia.
The government has also given more time to as many as 37 Special Economic Zone developers, including Navi Mumbai SEZ, DLF Commercial Developers and Tata Consultancy Services, to execute their projects. Five SEZ developers were allowed to surrender their projects as well. But the mounting criticism is now forcing the government to eject non-serious players from SEZ.
There was no holistic planning for SEZs to position them strategically for being complementary to each other and serving their own market niches respectively. The Ministry of Commerce that provides in-principle approvals to new SEZs on the basis of pre-feasibility reports being submitted by the respective state governments, soon seem to have lost its monitoring mechanism. Secondly, the SEZ was not synchronized with other schemes for development of specialized industrial parks.
Once seen as very powerful economic tool for catalyzing the growth process during restructure and liberalization of economy, Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in India could not replicate the Chinese success story, as assumed. Track2Realty takes a look on the future of SEZs in India as realtors make a beeline to exit or extend the tax haven, and the Government groping for fresh ideas.
A Parliamentary panel has castigated the government for not establishing industries in almost half the SEZs set up since 2006 and giving the land to realtors, diverting fertile land of farmers.
Bangalore-based property firm Century Real Estate Holdings is reportedly setting up a venture capital fund with a corpus of around Rs.100 crore.