Maha offers 8-yr tax holiday to boost port development

The Maharashtra government has announced an eight-year tax holiday for development of ports. Rolling out the revamped port policy that promises long term incentives to developers including multipurpose jetties and cargo terminals, chief minister Ashok Chavan said that port development ventures would be treated as industrial projects and exempted from royalty on excavation, electricity duty, registration and stamp duty on all instruments pertaining to port development, and free of cost right of way on the government land for water and electricity supply to ports. The new policy will benefit four ports that are in various stages of development in the state. It has made the Maharashtra Maritime Board a special planning authority (SPA) for port development. Under this mechanism, the chief executive officer of MMB will be authorised to issue clearance for land purchase deals involving 10 hectares or more. Mr Chavan claimed the policy was “better than Gujarat” and would attract investment worth Rs 22,775 crore in the port sector during the next five years. The policy would build cargo handling capacity of ports under MMB to 254 million tonne per annum. The chief minister admitted that the development of ports in Maharashtra so far had not been up to the potential. The state has extended the benefits of its package scheme of incentives for industry to the port sector as well. Development of ports, multipurpose jetty, and cargo terminals will get the same set of incentives availed by the industry under this scheme. The state would also make amendments to the Maharashtra Regional Town Planning Act of 1966 to empower the MMB to acquire private land for port development. The policy commits the port developers to corporate social responsibility and makes the state’s rehabilitation and compensation package mandatory for the project affected persons. It includes returning 12.5% of developed land to the PAPs, at least one job per family of PAPs, compensation to the fishermen, and technical training to the wards of fishermen. Also, the developers have to build road connectivity between the ports and the nearest highway at their cost. For the rail connectivity, a special purpose vehicle will be formed comprising MMB, Railway Development Corporation Ltd, and the port developer. Mr Chavan said the state was open to the public private partnership option for port development and the MMB would call for expression of interest after identification of sites. “We have a number of sites along the 720 km long coastline,” he said.