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India Dangles 20-Year Tax Holiday for Clouds
The Indian government aims to boost data centre investment with a 20-year tax holiday for foreign cloud firms meeting local operation conditions, targeting $200 billion in sector growth.
- Yesterday, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a proposed tax holiday for foreign cloud companies using Indian data centres, with the Finance Bill, 2026 exempting income through March 31, 2047 effective April 1, 2026.
- To boost investment in data centres, experts say the measure aims to enable critical infrastructure so India can serve global cloud workloads from domestic facilities, making India more attractive than hubs such as Singapore, UAE, and Ireland.
- Qualification rules require foreign cloud providers to route data‑centre services through an Indian re‑seller, with a safe‑harbour margin of up to 15.
- Big tech and hyperscalers welcomed the proposal, while datacenter operators and customers warned they must assess legal and data-sovereignty implications and environmental strains.
- With India hosting just three per cent of global data centres, Arundhati Bhattacharya projected the tax holiday could attract $50 billion in investments by 2030, reshaping the cloud market despite concerns for domestic deep-tech startups and re-seller entities.
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·India
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Total News Sources14
Leaning Left1Leaning Right3Center3Last UpdatedBias Distribution43% Center, 43% Right
Bias Distribution
- 43% of the sources are Center, 43% of the sources lean Right
43% Right
14%
C 43%
R 43%
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