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I-Bhd strides ahead with confidence following rebound in business

KUALA LUMPUR (June 28): I-Bhd, the master developer of i-City Golden Triangle which is Malaysia’s No. 1 Technology City, is set to stride forward with confidence as the rebound in its business activities gathers momentum.
Signs of renewed optimism and rebound are evident in all its major developments, the company said.
“Passenger traffic is back at 2019 levels of 90% at Central i-City shopping mall which is a joint-venture between i-City and Thailand’s largest retail property developer, Central Pattana group.
“Following the transition to endemicity, the leisure theme park has returned to profitability and [is] seeing a return to its pre-pandemic foot traffic.
“The i-City Convention Centre (iCCC) is experiencing good take-up, especially on pent-up demand, as events and activities could not be held over the last two years,” it said in a statement released after the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) on Tuesday (June 28).
Meanwhile, I-Bhd said Best Western i-City achieves occupancy of 65% currently, while bookings for ballrooms and function rooms at the upcoming 300-room DoubleTree by Hilton have been taken up for the first two weeks of the hotel opening, slated for August 2022.
The 52-storey BeCentral, offering luxury homes and targeted to be launched in the third quarter of 2022 (Q3 2022), has already received encouraging bookings, while Mercu Maybank, a 33-storey Grade-A Smart Corporate Office Tower at the Finance Avenue in i-City, is 82% tenanted with a strong pipeline, it added.
I-Bhd registered a pre-tax profit of RM1.7 million for Q1 2022, compared with a pre-tax loss of RM5.05 million in Q1 2021.
“We can hit the road running and would be able to see the signs of improvement within this year itself,’’ said I-Bhd chairman Tan Sri Lim Kim Hong.
Mukesh Ambani resigns from Reliance Jio, son Akash Ambani made chairman | India Business News – Times of India

In a stock exchange filing,
This comes after his father resigned with effect from the close of working hours on June 27, it said.
Jio is a unit of Reliance Industries Ltd, whose business spans from oil refining and petrochemicals to retail, media and new energy.
Ambani, 65, has three children – twins Akash and Isha and youngest son Anant.
It is widely anticipated that he may hand over the reins of the retail business to Isha, 30, who is married to Anand Piramal (son of Piramal Group’s Ajay and Swati Piramal).
Akash and Isha have been on the boards of Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd – the company that operates supermarkets offering consumer electronics, food and grocery, fashion, jewellery, footwear, and clothing, as well as the online retail venture, JioMart – and digital arm Jio Platforms Ltd (JPL) since October 2014.
Anant, 26, has recently been inducted as a director on RRVL. He has been a director on JPL since May 2020.
Among other appointments, Pankaj Mohan Pawar was appointed Managing Director of Reliance Jio Infocomm for five years beginning June 27, the filing said.
Former union finance secretary Raminder Singh Gujral and former CVC KV Chowdary were appointed independent directors, it added.
The two are already on board of Reliance Industries Ltd.
Reliance has three broad businesses – oil refining and petrochemicals, retail and digital services that include telecom. While retail and digital services are housed in separate wholly-owned subsidiaries, the oil-to-chemical or O2C business is a functional division of Reliance. The new energy business is also with the parent firm.
The three businesses are almost equal in size. While Akash and Isha have been both active in the group’s new-age businesses of retail and telecom, Anant has been looking at the renewable energy and oil and chemical units of Reliance as a director.
The announcement outlines a clear transfer of wealth by the 65-year-old tycoon, who was embroiled in a bitter inheritance dispute with his younger brother after their father died in 2002 without a will.
Ambani, whose net worth is over USD 109 billion, continues to be the chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Ltd. His wife Nita, 59, too is on board of Reliance.
He will also continue to be the chairman of Jio Platforms Ltd – the flagship company that owns all Jio digital services brands including Reliance Jio Infocomm.
As per the company filings, the Ambani family’s current stake in Reliance has risen to 50.6 per cent from 47.27 per cent in March 2019.
Ambani first spoke of a succession plan at Reliance Family Day, which marks the birth anniversary of the group’s founder Dhirubhai Ambani, on December 28 last year. Reliance, he had said, is “now in the process of effecting a momentous leadership transition.”
Prior to that, at the company’s annual general meeting (AGM) in June 2021, he had indicated that his children will now find a prominent place in the family’s vast empire. He had said: “I have no doubt whatsoever that the next generation of leaders at Reliance, led by Isha, Akash and Anant, will further enrich this precious legacy.”
The succession plan comes at a time when Reliance is in the middle of a very expensive switch to clean fuels by investing across the entire value chain of solar, batteries and hydrogen.
Just as steady cash flows from oil refining and petrochemicals made it possible for Reliance to incubate telecom from scratch, profits from digital businesses and retail may allow it to replace hydrocarbons — the conglomerate’s traditional source of wealth — with green energy over the next decade.
Dhirajlal Hirachand Ambani, also known as Dhirubhai Ambani, had founded Reliance in 1973. He led the family business expansion from textile to oil to telecom but the family plunged into chaos after his sudden death in 2002.
The differences between Mukesh and his younger brother Anil grew and after three years of bitter war, mother Kokilaben in 2005 divided Reliance’s assets. Mukesh got refining, petrochemicals, oil and gas and textile businesses, while Anil was made in charge of telecommunications, asset management, entertainment and power generation businesses.
Over years, Mukesh Ambani transformed Reliance into a behemoth with re-entry into the telecom business as well as forays into retailing and clean energy, while Anil Ambani’s business empire crumbled.
Since 2019, Mukesh Ambani has been slowly overhauling the top-heavy hierarchy at Reliance to improve governance in line with global standards. He sold a 32.97 per cent stake in Jio Platforms to likes of Google, Facebook and other venture capitals and got a clutch of foreign investors in the retail venture.
In Reliance’s new structure, different business verticals will be run like independent businesses. There will be no interdependencies between group companies for raising capital or debt servicing. The Ambani family is also consolidating its ownership in the company.
What is GST? | Complete GST Rate Guide | Cheaper & Dearer under GST | India Business News – Times of India

- GST is a multi-stage, destination-based tax that will be levied on every value addition
- Final consumer will bear only the GST charged by the last dealer in the supply chain
- Many VATs and levies currently in vogue will be subsumed by the new system come July 1
Read about the launch details here
Set to revolutionise the way India does its taxes, GST will be levied on value additions at each stage of the production cycle – buying raw materials, processing, manufacturing, warehousing and sale to customers – the monetary worth added at each stage to achieve the final sale to the end customer will be taxed. The final consumer will thus bear only the GST charged by the last dealer in the supply chain, with set-off benefits at all the previous stages.

Commuters drive past a huge cutout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi , next to Goods and Services Tax (GST) banners in New Delhi. (PTI photo)
Read here what will become cheaper and dearer under GST
In what makes it significantly different from the existing system, GST is a destination-based tax. Currently, the central government levies excise duty on the manufacture, and then the state adds VAT (Value Added tax) when the item is sold to the next stage in the cycle — i.e. from processed raw material like rubber to be manufactured into tyres. Then there would be a VAT at the next point of sale – i.e. when the tyre is sold to the dealership and then to the consumer and so on.
Read: How GST is billed to integrate India into a common market, bigger than the EU
If the tyres are made in Tamil Nadu and used in Delhi, under the GST regime, Delhi will earn the revenue on the final sale, because it is a destination-based tax and this revenue will be collected at the final point of sale/destination. Tamil Nadu will however get the benefits of GST levied at the earliest stages of manufacturing since the tyre was made there.
One Nation, One Tax? Not Quite, Not Yet
GST would apply to all goods other than crude petroleum, motor spirit, diesel, aviation turbine fuel and natural gas. It would apply to all services barring a few to be specified. With the increase of international trade in services, GST has become a global standard. GST will ensure that indirect tax rates and structures are common across India and increase the ease of doing business. This would make doing business in the country tax neutral, irrespective of the choice of place of doing business.
Your complete guide to GST rates is here
The government has opted for four slabs for both goods and services — 5%, 12%, 18% and 28%. In addition, several items face zero levy, while bullion will attract 3% GST and luxury and sin goods that are in the top bracket will also attract a cess that will be used to compensate states for revenue loss.

What is GST?
The proposed tax system will take the form of “dual GST” which is concurrently levied by central and state government. This will comprise of:
• Central GST (CGST) which will be levied by Centre
• State GST ( SGST ) Which will be levied by State
• Integrated GST (IGST) – which will be levied by Central Government on inter-State supply of goods and services.
Revenue secretary Hasmukh Adhia has said that the ultimate goal of the government should be to move to a single- or dual-rate goods and services tax regime.
Read here what Hasmukh Adhia said
“Ideally like all other advanced countries, we should have got one GST which is levied by one government only, and not a dual GST and also a GST in which there is a uniform rate. In our country, where there are different stratas of society to be looked after, it’s not possible to have an ideal GST. We are in a good direction. We will prefer to have a single GST rate but after sometime. That should be the ultimate goal — instead of having too many complicated rates, at least one or two rates should be there,” Adhia said
But pending that here’s a graphic example of how the system as implemented from July 1 will work:


Many VATs and levies currently in vogue will be subsumed by the new system come July 1.
At the Central level, the following taxes are being subsumed:
1. Central Excise Duty,
2. Additional Excise Duty,
3. Service Tax,
4. Additional Customs Duty commonly known as Countervailing Duty, and
5. Special Additional Duty of Customs.
At the State level, the following taxes are being subsumed:
1. Subsuming of State Value Added Tax/Sales Tax,
2. Entertainment Tax (other than the tax levied by the local bodies), Central Sales Tax (levied by the Centre and collected by the States),
3. Octroi and Entry tax,
4. Purchase Tax,
5. Luxury tax, and
6. Taxes on lottery, betting and gambling.
Quick Links:
Modi Speach on GST
Know all the key GST India launch highlights
GST Impact on Cars & Bikes
Read this story in Tamil
Space Matrix expects 30% rise in office space business
“If you look at any of the economic reports, India is clearly the hottest market. We are seeing a lot of foreign capital coming into India. We see domestic companies growing very aggressively and India’s economy is poised for growth, faster than any country in Asia,” said Arsh Chaudhry, CEO of the international workspace design firm.
The company designed about 9.9 million sq. ft. of office space in 2021, and 60% of its business came from India.
“If you look at any of the economic reports, India is clearly the hottest market. We are seeing a lot of foreign capital coming into India. We see domestic companies growing very aggressively and India’s economy is poised for growth, faster than any country in Asia,” said Chaudhry.
Space Matrix has recently acquired Pursuite, a B2B e-commerce platform in the hospitality sector.
“A digital procurement platform like Pursuite has a huge amount of use in the workplace sector,” said Chaudhry.
The biggest change companies have seen post-COVID, in terms of workplace design, is the fact that the people involved in conceptualising an office have changed.
“Pre-COVID, the C-suite was not so involved in designing an office, and the real estate teams and facilities teams will get involved and work with our firms. “COVID has elevated the importance of the workplace to the point where today’s CEO wants to be involved because he or she wants to ensure that the office is designed in such a way that it becomes a great tool to attract people, bring them back into the office, and motivate people to improve productivity,” Chaudhry explained.
The company is getting requests from all kinds of people, and many MNCs are even willing to redo the interiors of their offices to get employees to come back to work.
“A multinational, which had had an office for the last 20 years, got the entire fit out redone after two decades. So, it’s a complete renovation of the existing office. We have also done offices for start-ups. Everybody is looking at how this affects my employees. How do I get their morale up? How do I get them back to the office and how do I take care of them at large? So that’s a big switch, “said Akshay Lakhanpal, CEO India, Space Matrix.
Space Matrix said that technology firms have hired significantly because they have been growing super-fast in the last two years.
“And all those people working from home today are now back in the office or wanting to come back to the office and contribute to the demand for witnesses by us. Then there are those companies that designed offices pre-COVID-19 today, saying that I want to now redesign my office as the pre-COVID design doesn’t work now, “said Chaudhry.
The companies’ budget per square foot to redo the interiors has also increased by 20-25%.
“We are in an era of employee-centric working, and the pandemic has expedited the need to transform workspaces and accelerated existing future work trends, entailing broader human and emotional dimensions. Across industries, leaders will use the lessons from this large-scale work-from-home experiment to reimagine how work is done—and what role offices should play—thinking ten times faster, bigger and bolder, “said Chaudhry.
Employers are looking to use this opportunity to create a greater experience for talent, improve collaboration and productivity, and reduce costs.
“Today, the role of design is changing to address the new needs that organisations face. It is all about putting people first and letting them choose the ambience, facilities, and tools they need to deliver their best, “said Lakhanpal.
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