The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has signed 10 more unilateral advance pricing agreements (APAs) with Indian taxpayers as it looks to reduce litigation by providing certainty in transfer pricing.

The 10 APAs signed in the past one week pertain to sectors like telecom, pharma, banking and finance, steel, retail and information technology.

Two of these 10 agreements are Bilateral APAs with the United Kingdom and Japan. Seven of these agreements have rollback provisions in them.

With this, the total number of APAs entered into by the CBDT has reached 140. This includes 10 Bilateral APAs and 130 Unilateral APAs.

In the current financial year, a total of 76 APAs (7 Bilateral APAs and 61 Unilateral APAs) have already been entered into.

The international transactions covered in these agreements include payment of royalty fee, trading in goods, IT-enabled services, software development services, marketing support services, clinical research services, payment of interest on ECBs.

The CBDT expects more APAs to be concluded and signed before the end of the current fiscal.