Central Board of Direct Taxes, CBDT entered into nine Unilateral Advance Pricing Agreements, UAPAs with taxpayers this month. <br/><br/>A Finance Ministry statement said, some of the UAPAs signed had rollback provisions also. The Advance Pricing Agreement scheme endeavours to provide certainty to taxpayers in the domain of transfer pricing by specifying the methods of pricing and determining the Arm's Length Price of international transactions in advance for a maximum period of five future years. <br/><br/>Further, the taxpayer has the option to rollback the APA for four preceding years, as a result of which, a total of nine years of tax certainty is provided. Since its inception, the APA scheme has attracted tremendous interest among Multi National Enterprises. <br/><br/>The nine APAs signed in the month of July pertain to diverse sectors of the economy. CBDT has signed its first APA with a taxpayer engaged in supplying rigs used in Oil and Gas exploration. <br/><br/>Other than the Oil and Gas Sector, the APAs pertain to Education, Banking, Pharmaceutical, Manufacturing and Information Technology sectors of the economy.