A team from Hamriyah Free Trade Zone visited the city explaining the advantages of investing in their zone in Sharjah (UAE) on Thursday.
With Indian economy growing at a fast and steady pace, the time was ripe for Indian businesses to benefit from the advantages provided by HFZ to expand globally into newer markets, said Muhamed Basheer, Head of International Promotions Hamriyah Free Zone Authority. The zone primarily focuses on sectors like petrochemicals, maritime, oil and gas and perfume. It is now looking to develop logistics, food and beverage, commodities and packaging sectors.
In a bid to attract more investments from Indian businesses in existing and new sectors from Visakhapatnam and other places, a delegation from Hamriyah Free Zone met members of the A.P. Chambers of Commerce and Industry Federation to share details of benefits being offered, inviting them for investments while understanding the requirement of Indian businessmen during an interactive meet. While emphasising the need for more investment in HFZ, Mr. Basheer said India was one of UAE’s key partners with 30% of the total investments received by HZF followed by Europe and UK.
Incentives
With 6,500 firms from across 157 countries, of which 1,500 are from India, the Hamriyah Free Zone not only offers fully convertible currency and multi-access to Europe, Africa, U.S. and the Latin American countries through land, sea and air, but also provides investment incentives like total exemption of import and export tax, commercial levies and corporate profit tax, personal income tax and 15-year renewable leases. It also allows 100% repatriation of capital and profits and 100% company ownership. Federation president G. Sambasiva Rao said attractive incentives were extremely helpful for entrepreneurs in furthering business activities.
Free trade zones
He underscored the need to develop free trade zones on the lines of HFZ in Andhra Pradesh, especially in Visakhapatnam, to give much needed boost for the exporters thereby propelling the region’s economy.
This year alone, it has invested $150 million for developing the third phase of the HFZA through construction of new road networks, highway and warehouses said Geomon George-Assistant Head of Business Development, HFZA.
India representative, CRIF Gulf Dun & Bradstreet-Dubai Jayesh Baharadur said in the past, HFZA organised roadshows across all Indian cities to enlighten the potential firms the advantages offered by the zone.
