Track2Realty-Agencies: IDFC Alternatives, real estate arm of Infrastructure Development Finance Corp. Ltd (IDFC) has bought assets worth about Rs. 250 crore in Pune’s real estate developer Paranjape Schemes (Construction) Ltd’s Hinjewadi Special Economic Zone (SEZ) for information technology (IT) and information technology-enabled services (ITeS) firms and luxury residential space.
Pune has been a favoured industrial destination for a very long time. In fact, manufacturing has been a major development focus for the city since the inception of PCMC in the 1960’s. Since then, there has been a massive influx of European companies who were and continue to be keen on setting up manufacturing facilities there.
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.
The Estate Agents’ Association of Pune (EAAP) has released the seventh edition of `EAAP Directory’ 2012-16.
Rising cost and falling transactions are taking their toll on the property market in both the Delhi-NCR and Mumbai.
As the second home phenomenon gains currency in the industrially-developed Mumbai-Pune- Nashik belt, real estate firm Eiffel Group has earmarked Rs 300 crore over the next three years to launch more projects in the region, referred to as the state’s ‘golden triangle’.