Centre clears six SEZs, including by Lanco & Sterlite

The government on Friday approved the setting up of six new special economic zones or SEZs, areas which receive special tax and duty concessions for manufacturing and exports.

Among those approved are a solar SEZ by infrastructure company Lanco in Chhattisgarh and a copper SEZ by Sterlite Industries in Tamil Nadu.

The approvals also allayed fears that the SEZ policy was losing steam. Companies like DLF , India’s biggest real estate developer, had wanted to surrender their SEZ licences during the downturn of last year.

Against a pre-recession tally of 577 approved SEZs, the total number of approved SEZs stood at 580, including the six approved on Friday, the ministry of commerce and industry said.

The number of approved SEZs had fallen to 573 in December last year and to 571 in February this year as some of the developers bailed out of the projects on the basis of perceived commercial inviability.

Both exports and employment also rose during the first nine months of the current financial year, the ministry added. Direct
employment went from 3.55 lakh to 4.9 lakh while exports from SEZs rose even faster.

Against just under 1 lakh crore ($21.9 billion) worth of exports during 2008-09, exports from SEZs hit 1.52 lakh crore ($32.3 billion) during just the first nine months of 2009-10.
India’s total exports during the year are expected to be around $160 billion.

As a result, the growth of exports from SEZs during 2009-10 is expected to be even faster than the 50% growth seen during the previous year.

Maharashtra leads the nation with 109 approved SEZs, out of which 15 are operational, according to a chart released by the government two months ago. It was followed by AP, with 102 approved SEZs and 21 operational ones, followed by Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Karnataka.