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| | GEO Business | | FBR announces package for companies in SEZs | Updated at: 1241 PST, Monday, March 08, 2010
 ISLAMABAD: The Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) announced special privileges the companies working in Special Economic Zones for developments and establishing industries there.
The FBR allowed corporate income tax holiday for a period of 10 years for the developers of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in Pakistan and corporate income tax holiday for 5 years for the industrial projects to be established in such zones.
According to SRO 123 (i) 2010 issued here the FBR has amended the second schedule to the Income tax Ordinance, 2001 in this regard. A new section 126E has been inserted in the ordinance stating that corporate income tax holiday for a period of five years for the projects from the date of start of the commercial operations, and for developers of the zone for a period of 10 years from the date of start of development activity in the SEZ as announced by the federal government.
The SEZs are being established in the country with private investment and the government is improving its fiscal incentive regime to attract foreign investment in export-oriented industries.
An important achievement of Ministry of Investment in this period is that the various foreign potential companies are showing their keen interest to explore the untapped resources especially in power generation, oil and gas, agri-farming, affordable housing, infrastructure and engineering sectors.
Realising the central importance of foreign direct investment (FDI) to economic development, the present government has taken wide-ranging steps to liberalise its inward investment regime and have succeeded in attracting substantial amount of foreign investment.
The government has decided to make fiscal incentives more competitive to determine development standards for the special industrial and economic zones of the country to make Pakistan more attractive for foreign investors.
A task force is to be constituted which would not only determine the standards but would also provide mechanism for the implementation of the tax incentives package to be available in these SEZs including China-Pakistan Industrial and Economic Zones (CPEZ).
The task force would coordinate implementation of the policy action plan for the development of SEZ. Task force would be chaired by the adviser to prime minister on finance and its members would include officials from FBR, Ministry of Commerce; Ministry of Industries; Board of Investment (BoI) and chief secretaries of all the four provinces.
The agency responsible for administration of SEZ’s policies and development of implementation regulations will be a special directorate affiliated with the BoI.
The role of BOI will be to facilitate the investors and SEZ’s developers with the help of relevant independent service organisations working as one coherent team. SEZs Act would be formulated once the task force takes shape. |  |
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