Infrastructure bottleneck: Guj-run SEZs lose out to pvt competitors

Despite the hype generated by the government over its Special Economic Zone Policy (SEZ), lack of infrastructure are turning many big business houses away from the state SEZ.

Though the government says that the SEZ Policy would lead employment generation, the lack of enough land required for setting up huge units, lack of clarity over the labour laws in a SEZ are turning big entrepreneurs away from these SEZs.

Many point that out that state SEZ lack social infrastructure, such as educational institutions, entertainment centres, accommodations for the employees etc. Even the tax sops are not acting a impetus.

But when the state SEZ lack these, private players such as Adani Group under the banner of Mundra SEZ Ltd, Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and Seaking Infrastructure Ltd, promoted by industrialist Nikhil Gandhi, are planning to take the state-run SEZs head-on by offering the social infrastructure within their proposed SEZs along with huge lands devoted to the industries with the offer for providing them flexibility to expand their units in future if required.

While the Adanis have already initiated civil work for its mega-SEZ project to be spread over 10,000 hectres of land at Mundra in Kutch and have finalised plans for setting up health facilities with Apollo Group, discussions are on between Adanis and various educational institutions to setup schools/colleges within the proposed SEZ.

"We have carried out studies on various SEZs in India and abroad like Jebel Ali SEZ in Dubai and found that most of the Indian SEZs unfortunately lack in social infrastructure and also in providing enough space to big industry players," said Sanjay Gupta, CEO of Adani Group.

"In Mundra SEZ we are going to take care of all these issues and state government understanding our requirements, is flexible towards the land accusation which would make Mundr SEZ comparable to Jebel Ali SEZ, known to be one of the best SEZs in the world," he added.

Reliance has now almost finalised its plan to setup its port-based SEZ in the Jamnagar coast with an investment ranging between Rs 12000-15,000 crore, which according to sources, also would be armed with various facilities for the family members of the employees working in industrial units to be setup in the SEZ.

While RIL officials did not comment on the infrastructure for its proposed SEZ, sources in the Government said that Reliance is also planning to setup a technical and management school within its proposed SEZ and a school till 12th standard on the line of its Kokilaben Ambani School at Vadinar may be setup within the SEZ campus or adjoining areas.

Reliance like the Adanis is expected to spread its SEZ on over 10000 hectares of land thus offering flexibility for future expansion for the industries to operate from within its SEZ.

However, the state-run SEZs such as Kandla SEZ, Falta SEZ or Noida SEZ in the northern India feel that they could have hiked up their business in several multiplications provided they could have offered required infrastructure and social infrastructure to the industries which are already in and these SEZs could have also attracted bigger industry players.