Bihar offers package of incentives to industries

Patna, Jul 22: Promises galore in the industrial promotion policy of Bihar Government announced here on July 20 last, including tax holiday for the growing period, capital subsidy and supply of power at subsidised rates.

The industrial policy has been meticulously framed with a view to alluring investors and attracting big players in industry to infuse nutrients to sick industrial units and revive the closed ones.

Exhorting captains of the industry to come to Bihar, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar allayed apprehensions of getting strangled in bureaucratic red tapism and assured them to introduce single window clearing system of proposals.

The new policy provides cent percent rebate on stamp duty and registration fees for the new industries. New units will be exempted from paying luxury tax, energy charge and market tax for seven years from the date of beginning commercial production.

'' A corpus would be created for the revival of closed and sick industrial units,'' industrial development commissioner S Vijay Raghavan said during a press briefing on the industrial promotion policy after announcement of the new industrial policy on Thursday.

The policy states that rebate of 75 paise per unit will be allowed on power supply to the handloom and powerloom sectors. To help sick units in the said sectors to revive, the principal amount of the bank loan would be paid by the government once the banks waive the interest loan, Mr Raghavan added.

The new policy proposes to allow reimbursements of the amount paid under VAT up to 80 per cent for 10 years for all new units. To encourage women, SC and ST entrepreneurs, the limit of reimbursement has been raised to 85 per cent and up to 90 per cent for those units which take affirmative action as per the government's reservation policy while recruiting employees'' he said.

Mr Raghavan said new units in power generation would get a capital subsidy of fifty per cent on the amount spent for the purpose and no energy tax would be charged for five years.

UNI