The Hindu Business Line : Posco, 12 other SEZs get in-principle nod

Full steam ahead
Posco plan for Rs 53,000-cr multi-product SEZ okayed
Total number of formal approvals till date at 181
Reliance, TCS, Biocon among important notified proposals

New Delhi , Sept 28

The Board of Approvals for Special Economic Zones (SEZs) today gave in-principle approval to 13 fresh SEZs, including the Rs 53,000-crore proposal from Posco India Private Ltd to set up a multi-product SEZ in Jagatisinghpur district of Orissa, spread over an area of 1,601.6 hectares.

At its fifth meeting, under the Chairmanship of Mr G.K. Pillai, Special Secretary in Ministry of Commerce and Industry and Commerce Secretary-Designate, the board also gave clearance for 18 formal and 13 in-principle approvals for establishment of SEZs.

This takes the total number of formal approvals for establishment of SEZs till date to 181 (163 earlier plus 18 today).

The board gave its nod for six notifications for SEZs, out of which four are in the IT/ITES sector and one each in pharmaceuticals and engineering products.

The pharmaceuticals SEZ plan is from Zydus Infrastructure Pvt Ltd in Ahmedabad over 48.83 acres, while the engineering product SEZ has been mooted by Essar Hazira SEZ (Developer) Ltd in Hazira Taluka Chorysai, Gujarat spread over 247.52 hectares.

With the six notified SEZs today, the total number of SEZs in the country goes to 32 in diverse areas such as petroleum and petrochemicals, electronics hardware and related services, pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, IT, gems and jewellery, automobile and components, ITES, non-conventional energy including solar energy equipment/cell, engineering products and multi-product SEZ.

Among the important notified SEZ proposals are from Reliance Infrastructure Ltd (Gujarat), Flextronics Technologies (Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu) TCS (Siruseri and Egattur, Chennai), Biocon (Bangalore), Apache SEZ Development India (Nellore, Andhra Pradesh), Satyam Computer Services (Hyderabad) and Hexaware Technologies (Siruseri, Chennai).

Officials told Business Line that the difference between grant of in-principle approval and notification of SEZs is that the latter have acquired the land for going ahead with their remit of developing the building blocks for housing export units so that they could begin export activities.

Only recently, the Board has prescribed the criteria of net worth and minimum investment for SEZ developers with a view to scotching any move by fly-by-night operators from grabbing land and tax breaks for ulterior purposes.

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