Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma today said that he has conveyed investor concerns over the proposed withdrawal of fiscal benefits to SEZs to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and assured the industry of protecting the exemptions.
“We have discussed this with the Finance Minister and also with the Prime Minister…I would like to assure (you) that we will protect the benefits which the investors were to get in the SEZs,” Sharma told the gathering of industrialists and exporters while releasing the Foreign Trade Policy review here.
The revised discussion paper on the Direct Tax Code (DTC), which would overhaul the Income Tax Act, proposes tax exemptions only for the existing SEZ units.
The proposal has unnerved developers of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs).
