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Can India's new finance hub in Gujarat become the next Singapore or Dubai?

Gujarat International Finance ­Tec-­City, more commonly known as GIFT City, occupies 886 acres between Gujarat's capital, Gandhinagar, and Ahmedabad, its biggest city

Photo: Bloomberg
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IFT City is an experiment in free markets nestled inside a $3 trillion economy that’s long been reluctant to let its national currency, the rupee, become a plaything of international investors. (Photo: Bloomberg)

Jeanette Rodrigues and Subhadip Sircar | Bloomberg
India’s newest financial hub is rising from scrubland near the banks of the Sabarmati River once dominated by marsh birds and grazing buffalo.
 
In the state of Gujarat, just a few glass-fronted towers greet the 20,000 employees of companies such as JPMorgan Chase & Co. and HSBC Holdings Plc who commute in each weekday. Its full name is Gujarat International Finance ­Tec-­City, but it’s more commonly known as GIFT City. It occupies 886 acres between Gujarat’s capital, Gandhinagar, and Ahmedabad, its biggest city. As of October, bankers managed a combined $33 billion here.

What’s drawing these companies? An exemption from

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