Pending SEZ proposals may be cleared soon

NEW DELHI: There is some early action awaiting the over 400 special economic zone (SEZ) proposals held up by the board of approval (BoA) due to the freeze imposed by the government.

The BoA is likely to hold its first meeting on May 9 for clearing pending proposals. While the BoA can take up only a limited number of proposals at a time, other meetings of the BoA will be held subsequently to clear the backlog.

The board would be meeting after a gap of seven months for approving fresh proposals. It held a series of meetings in October 2006 clearing several proposals, taking the number of formal approvals to 212 and in-principle approvals to 152.

The meeting scheduled for mid-January this year had to be cancelled amidst reports of controversial land acquisition for SEZs by states and protests from farmers erupting in various parts of the country. The empowered group of ministers (EGoM) on SEZs, which met on January 22, decided to freeze all fresh approvals.

The freeze was lifted last week after changes were made in the SEZ rules placing a ceiling on SEZ size and restricting states from acquiring land for private developers.

According to commerce department officials, the BoA has been asked to exercise caution while taking up cases where land has not been acquired by the developers. “While there is no bar on in-principle approvals, the commerce ministry will carry out its own investigations to ensure that the land to be acquired by developers is not under dispute,” an official said.

The BoA may now also be flooded with applications from SEZs that have received in-principle approvals for specific proposals requesting that the zone be allowed to be broken up into smaller ones. Developers of large SEZs may go in for smaller zones not only to meet the ceiling criteria but also to ensure contiguity as they can no longer take the help of the government to acquire tricky bits of land.