The Centre will come out with amendments to Special Economic Zones (SEZ) Rules, to synchronise them with the Goods and Services Tax (GST) laws by end of this month, a senior government official has said.

“We have been working for a few months on the amendment of SEZ Rules, 2006 to synchronise it with the GST laws. Following due consultation process with the Department of Revenue, I am glad to tell you that this fairly elaborate amendments of the rules is likely to come out now by the end of this month. It is almost at the final stage,” said Bidyut Behari Swain, Additional Secretary, Department of Commerce, at an Assocham International SEZ Investment Summit on Tuesday.

Swain said while the Department of Commerce consistently looks at facilitating ease of doing business by removing bottlenecks, it was observed that there is a possibility of different authorities handling administrative and financial matters being at slight variance with each other, according to an Assocham release.

Clear guidelines

“We have taken up a project in which we would like to have a very clear set of guidelines regarding how administrative and financial matters by the authorities are carried out and we are hopeful that we will come out with a report in two months which should be implemented in three months,” he said. Pranab Kumar Das, Special Secretary and Member Customs, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), said his department will get in touch with the Commerce Ministry to explore possibility of connecting SEZ Online with National Import Database (NIDB) for better uniformity and transparency in operations, the release added.

“We will definitely get in touch with Ministry of Commerce and try to find out whether the SEZ Online can also be housed in our system and with facilities provided to development commissioners and officials posted there so that they get benefit not only from SEZ Online but also the robust facility that is already available within CBIC,” said Das.

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