The Hindu Business Line : Eight SEZ proposals to be considered today

New Delhi, March 19 The Board of Approval (BoA) for special economic zones is holding its meeting here on Thursday to consider eight fresh cases for approval and conversion of one in-principle approval to formal one and this is by far the smallest number of cases for approval in recent period.

Official sources told Business Line here that more fresh cases would be dwindling as the existing SEZs that have been notified have begun approaching the BoA for approval to go ahead with authorised activities in the non-processing area for undertaking social infrastructure as per the SEZ Rules.

The eight fresh cases to come up for approval by the Commerce Secretary, Mr Gopal K. Pillai, who is the Chairman of the board include a multi-product SEZ in Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh by Limitless Properties Ltd and a biotech SEZ by Vivo Bio Tech Ltd in Medak district of Andhra Pradesh.

The one case for conversion of in-principle to formal approval relates to Smart City (Kochi) Infrastructure Pvt Ltd in Kerala for information technology/IT-enabled services.

210 approvals

When contacted, the Export Promotion Council for SEZs and EOUs Director-General, Mr Lalit B. Singhal, told Business Line here that in the current fiscal as many as 210 SEZs have been approved. He said that 42 notified functioning SEZs had done $10 billion worth of exports during the first nine months of the current fiscal and their investment is around $18 billion.

Since the operationalisation of the SEZ Act which became effective from February 10, 2006, additional direct employment provided by these units numbered 1.46 lakhs, he added.

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