SEZ approval board to meet on January 10

NEW DELHI: After a two-month break, the board of approval (BoA) for special economic zones (SEZs) is scheduled to hold its next meeting on January 10. The agenda for the meeting has already been circulated to give the home ministry enough time to look at security-related issues.

Speaking to ET, official sources said the BoA was meeting after a gap as all pending proposals (about 200) had been examined in a series of five meetings held in October. “We wanted to have sufficient number of applications before we held a meeting. We have now received about 90 applications which we propose to take up in the next meeting,” an official said.

The total number of formal SEZ approvals stand at 237 and in-principle approvals at 170. The agenda for the BoA has been circulated a month in advance instead of the usual practice of finalising it 15 days before the meeting in order to give the ministry of home affairs adequate time to look at security issues.

In the last meeting, the home ministry had sought time for clearing a couple of proposals which involved land near border areas. Since the home ministry had claimed that the last-minute objections was due to a short notice-period, the department of commerce has decided to circulate the agenda 30 days before the meeting.