Mumbai LTU to be made functional by March

Mumbai, Jan 7 (UNI) Country's third Large Tax Payers Unit (LTU), which is being set up here, will become functional by March this year, a senior Mumbai Income Tax official said today.

The Finance Ministry is awaiting the response of the UTI Infrastructure to the offer made by the high-powered commitee, for acquring three floors at World Trade Centre (WTC) for this purpose, an official said here today.

''The commitee, set up by the Finance Ministry to negotiate land prices, met in December and offered its prices to the UTI Infrastructure for acquiring the proposed space. We are awaiting their response,'' the official said.

''Once that is done, it will take about six weeks to do the interiors of the place,'' he added.

Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram during his 2005-06 Budget speech, had announced a proposal to set up LTUs in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Chennai as part of the plans to provide a single window to the large tax payers.

While the Bangalore unit started functioning from October last year, the LTU at Chennai was made functional recently.

Admitting that convincing the large tax payers to join the network did cause considerable delay in setting up the unit in Mumbai, the official said that so far 25 such tax payers have agreed to join the LTU here.

''Initially, there were some inhibitions and apprehensions among the large tax payers. However, we have been able to remove those through a regular interaction with them,'' the official said.

UNI IAS MAZ BJR KN1926