Google, Accenture, Dell book berths in SEZs

Google, the world's largest search engine, is planning to set up back-office operations at a special economic zone in Andhra Pradesh. Government officials said Google's investment into the venture could be as high as $1 billion.

The company's operations, which will be spread over 1 million sq ft, comprised one of the foreign investments into an SEZ cleared by the Board of Approvals today.

Some other foreign investments cleared included Dell's and Accenture's. Dell's investment is also likely to be made in Andhra Pradesh, while Accenture is likely to make its investments in Karnataka.

These are the latest in a string of big-ticket investments in India by global IT and telecom giants. The list includes Cisco, SAP, Intel, and Microsoft committing $1billion-plus investments, and AMD's proposed $1-billion investment.

State government representatives who attended the BoA meeting said the proposals of several top Indian information technology firms for setting up SEZs were also cleared, including two zones of Infosys in Pune and Mysore, and proposals of Wipro, HCL, Cognizant and NIIT. A knowledge city being set up by Technocrats in Bangalore was also approved.

A total of 45 cases were cleared, taking the number of approvals since the Act was passed to 150, the limit set by the empowered Group of Ministers on SEZs.

With over 100 cases pending and 80 cases deferred at today's meeting, the commerce ministry is expected to request for an early decision on the future strategy.

Some of the cases pending before the BoA include South Korean company Posco's proposal for an SEZ in Orissa, and Indonesian company Salem's proposal for setting up a zone in West Bengal.

A formal notification on the cases cleared is expected to be issued later this week, after minutes of today's meeting are approved by Commerce Minister Kamal Nath.

Suzlon's proposal for setting up non-conventional SEZs in Gujarat, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu was given an in-principle approval, since the land for these zones is to be tied up.

Vedanta's proposal for an SEZ in Orissa also received an in-principle clearance, while Essar's multi-product zone at Jamnagar, and Mahindra's biotechnology zone at Thane were formally cleared.