Government to notify Special Economic Zones reforms soon

NEW DELHI: The government on Tuesday said it will soon notify the Special Economic Zones reforms which seek to ease land requirement norms and provide for an exit policy.

"I think in a couple of weeks time rules will come out," Commerce Secretary S R Rao told reporters on the sidelines of an Assocham function here.

In the supplementary Foreign Trade Policy (FTP), the government had announced these reforms.

Once a major attraction for investors, SEZs lost sheen following imposition of MAT ( Minimum Alternate Tax) and DDT (Dividend Distribution Tax), including certain provisions in the proposed direct tax regime ( DTC), besides the global slowdown.

The government had taken note of the fact that there are acute difficulties in aggregating large tracts of uncultivable land lying vacant, to set up SEZ.

For multi--product SEZ, minimum land requirement has been brought down from 1,000 hectares to 500 hectares and for sector-specific SEZs, it has been brought down to 50 hectares.

Also, there would be no minimum land requirement for setting up IT\ITES SEZs, besides easing of minimum built up area criteria.

The 170 functional SEZs -- export oriented enclaves -- have attracted an investment of over Rs 2.36 lakh crore and exports from them totalled Rs 4.76 lakh crore in 2012-13, a growth of over 2,000 per cent over the 7 years period.

So far, the government has notified about 390 SEZs in different parts of the country. The SEZs provide employment to about one million people.