M'rashtra doubles FSI for industrial townships

In order to attract private players to acquire and develop small parcels of land under the integrated industrial area policy, the state cabinet in Maharashtra has recently brought about a slew of changes to the policy to make it more lucrative and attractive for investors. As part of the amendments, the floor space index (FSI) for such projects has been doubled to 2. A 50% stamp duty relaxation has been offered and government land can be acquired to make it a contiguous land parcel. The new policy was originally prepared for small and medium enterprises to function in planned industrial areas but was not getting a sufficient response, compared to other states such as Gujarat, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, which are getting a better response as their concessions are better. The requirement to set up an integrated industrial area has been reduced from 40 hectares to 20 hectares considering difficulty in acquiring land and increasing unavailability of land in the state. The areas will get open access to power and will be covered under provisions of the Open Access Regulation, 2013 and under the Act customers seeking electricity in excess of one megawatt can get additional power from the energy provider through free access. The state government has also allowed the private player to retain 80% of the total area as industrial and 20% for other purposes; earlier it was in the ration of 60% and 40%, respectively.