Goa SEZ ball now in BoA court

NEW DELHI: The Board of Approval for special economic zones will consider the state government’s request to scrap all SEZs in Goa in its meeting next month.

The issue of denotifying the three SEZs which have already been notified, however, has to be primarily settled between the Goa government and developers of the SEZs, a senior ministry official said.

In addition to the three notified SEZs, which include pharma major Cipla’s Meditab Specialities, Raheja’s IT/ITeS SEZ and Peninsula Pharma’s biotech SEZ, there are four more which have been formally approved and eight others in the pipeline. The BoA will have to cancel the approvals for all these projects.

“The BoA will not take a hasty decision, considering the SEZs are already notified and investments have been made,” the official said.

Goa CM Digambar Kamat, after announcing the scrapping of all SEZs in the state on December 31, 2007, had met commerce and industry minister Kamal Nath to present his case. The minister had said that the Centre would not thrust any SEZ on states and would go by what state governments want.

Reiterating his stand, talking to reporters on the sidelines of the Partnership Summit organised by CII in Gurgaon, the minister said, “The Centre will not thrust any SEZ. The states can choose their own developmental model”.

Cipla has already invested Rs 130 crore in its SEZ and has committed investments of Rs 500 crore. It is expected to suffer huge losses by the state’s decision to scrap SEZs. One option before the Goa government is to compensate the developers for the investments they have already made with interest.