SEZs in high demand areas on wait list

Govt wants more uniform spread of zones.

Companies like Unitech and Infosys planning more special economic zones (SEZs) may be in for an indefinite wait.

This is because their SEZs are proposed to be set up in states like Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, which already have a number of such zones.

Since the Centre wants to evenly distribute 150 zones across the country, these proposals may not be cleared.

The empowered Group of Ministers on SEZs recently decided not to clear more than this number of zones for now. Most zones have so far been restricted to Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Maharashtra and Haryana.

Of its two proposals, Infosys' plan to set up an information technology zone in Mysore was deferred at the last meeting of the Board of Approval (body to approve SEZs) held on June 12.

So were Unitech's two proposals for zones at Kanchipuram and Ernakulam "While these companies were told that their proposals have been deferred, there is a view that the states where these were proposed already had too many SEZs. These may not get cleared as we want equal distribution of zones across states before the 150 cap is reached," a government official told Business Standard.

Another 8-10 proposals of smaller companies for infotech zones in Karnataka and 5-6 proposals for Andhra Pradesh were also deferred on similar grounds.

Officials added that two proposals "" one for an infotech zone at Uttaranchal and another for an auto component zone in Chhattisgarh "" were cleared, in keeping with the objective of encouraging a better spread of zones across the country.

The empowered Group of Ministers, at its last meeting, agreed to restrict the number of SEZs to 150, with effect from February 10, 2006, the date on which the SEZ Rules were notified.

The inter-ministerial Board of Approval had, at its last meeting, cleared seven zones of Parsavnath, a real estate company.

These included a 100-hectare leather zone at Agra, a 100-hectare food-processing zone at Sonipat, a 10-hectare biotech zone in Hyderabad, a 10-hectare IT zone at Dehradun, a 1000-hectare multi-product zone at Kanchipuram, a 100-hectare gems and jewellery zone in Rajasthan and a 10-hectare zone in Rajasthan.