Process to spot allies for Indore SEZ begins

The selection process to identify strategic partners for the Indore Special Economic Zone (ISEZ) seems to have kick-started with a pre-bid meeting between the Madhya Pradesh government and the shortlisted firms at Bhopal that was held on Wednesday.

The meeting is significant since the state cabinet had already approved the shortlisted strategic players about two months ago. Issues related to the seeding process and distinctive strengths from the developers' perspective were also discussed at the meeting.

The sven shorlisted companies participated in a presentation before the high-powered committee led by Tata Economic Consultancy Services (TECS) "" the advisor to the state government on SEZ. The seven shortlisted companies are Tata Housing, Gammon India, L&T, Punj Lloyd, Zoom Developers, Watsila and Ankit Developers.

"Since the SEZ talks about private partnership as a facilitator, it is necessary to bring in private capital in the process. In this context, Wednesday's meeting is of immense importance," asserted

N J Sheth, CEO and managing director, TECS, while speaking to the media after the meeting.

He said TECS has developed a transparent process to turbo-charge the development of the ISEZ.

He said ISEZ has a competitive advantage over other SEZs in the country. "Partnership can be in the form of a consortium and we see ISEZ as the new ravishing face of MP." The shortlisted players are expected to respond to the state government by October 10. By December-end this year they need to submit tenders with their offering.

"In addition, Reliance, DLF and IVRCF have also shown interest in strategic partnership," S K Pachhapurkar, consulting advisor, TECS.

Ashish Shrivastava, managing director, MPAKVN (Indore), who participated in the meeting, said the ISEZ needs to provide the state-of-the-art facilities at par with international standards so as to have the best bargaining in getting investments.

The ISEZ targets $2 billion industrial investment in addition to $700 million in infrastructure over a decade. "First of all, we aren't compromising on quality and have benchmarked $3 billion annual export and a large-scale direct and indirect employment, keeping a low-profit margin," said Shrivastava.