MUMBAI: Nearly 15 months since becoming the chief minister of Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis has set the ball rolling on creating an international financial district in Mumbai which could look to draw global businesses from other Asian cities such as Dubai and Singapore, said people familiar with the move.Work on creating a top class financial arena will begin as soon as April when a committee headed by Union minister of state for finance Jayant Sinha prepares a master plan to develop the area which already houses the biggest names in Indian finance — ICICI Bank , Bank of Baroda, UTI Mutual Fund Deutsche Bank , a diamond bourse, and Citibank.The government plans to invite at least 10 more prominent men from industry and finance to help it draft the plan and make the project a reality which has been talked about for years. But the state government officials, this time, have already held discussions with finance minister Arun Jaitley and the Reserve Bank of India which needs to alter many rules.The master plan envisages a separate taxation system in BKC which would mean a complete different rates and process of administering them. State government officials said that the framework for setting up the IFC is being done on the lines of the GIFT City, a minor attempt in making a regional financial centre in Gujarat, with certain tweaks. In Gujarat, while the developer who sets up a unit will not have to pay income tax for 10 years, Maharashtra is planning to reduce it even further.When the project becomes operational it could change the stature of not only the city, but the nation as well, said Poonam Mahajan, deputy chairperson of the committee."Singapore, Hong Kong and Dubai have prospered because many Indians prefer to set up their companies there instead of setting up here because of taxation issues," said Mahajan. "What we are going to do is simply remove those tax hindrances."There have been many committees in the past, including the one by Percy Mistry, which studied and recommended how to make Mumbai a global financial centre. But there has been little action. The proposed development of 60 acres of land for International Finance Centre compares with 110 acres for the Dubai Financial Centre and more than 320 acres for London’s financial district of Canary Wharf. Other members of the empowered committee include chief secretary Swadheen Kshatriya and OSD Kaustubh Dhavse.Mahajan said that the BKC project would involve not just clearing taxation hurdles but also creating world class infrastructure. "We are planning to build a Tram system that would be running in this precinct to encourage more people to use this; we could run it for free," said Mahajan.