Chamber seeks waiver of MD charges for lockdown period

The Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Coimbatore, has appealed to Electricity Minister V. Senthilbalaji to consider waiver of Maximum Demand (MD) charges for High Tension electricity consumers for the lockdown period.

In a memorandum submitted to the Minister at a meeting held at the Chamber on Friday, its president C. Balasubramanian said industries, especially the High Tension electricity consumers were affected badly due to lockdown last year. Several States, including Gujarat, Karnataka, and Uttar Pradesh, had waived the MD charges for HT consumers for this period.

Tamil Nadu was the most important State with a high number of industries. Hence, the government should consider waiver of MD charges for these units for the lockdown period.

The State government had announced that registration fee would be reduced to 0 % for agreements of micro and small enterprises and to further easy access to formal credit, the government would amend the Registration Act 1908 to permit online registration agreement relating to Memorandum of Deposit of Title Deeds for availing of term and working capital loan. The necessary government order should be issued at the earliest for this, it said.

For availing of bank loans, the MD charges for registration was reduced to ₹ 5,000 till December end. This should be retained at ₹5,000 permanently, the Chamber said.

It also sought introduction of single window clearance for sanction of building approvals.

This system should be adopted by Director of Town and Country Planning, Local Planning Authority, Corporation, and Housing Department.

Further, at present the building completion certificate was taking time as applications were kept pending even for minor deviations. The certificate should be issued if there were no deviations in height of the building, parking area, Floor Space Index and setback.

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