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Govt may relax ceiling on land for multi-product SEZs

PTI
New Delhi, Dec 3 The government may look at relaxing the 5,000 hectare ceiling on land for multi-product special economic zones once the Land Acquisition Act and the resettlement and rehabilitation policy are enacted, the commerce secretary, Mr Gopal Pillai said here.

“Now that the new resettlement and rehabilitation policy has come into being, the government may think of relaxing the upper limit of 5,000 hectares for SEZs,” he told reporters on the sidelines of the India economic summit.

An empowered group of ministers had in April this year capped the maximum area for a multi-product SEZ at 5000 hectare. This had led to Reliance Industries and real estate majors DLF and Omaxe cut the size of their over 5000 hectare proposed SEZs. While Reliance had plans to set up two 10,000 hectare zones in Haryana and Mumbai, DLF was looking at an 8000-hectare zone in Gurgaon and Omaxe an 6070 hectare zone in Alwar.

Mr Pillai said the ceiling on size of land may be relaxed for multi-product zones, 34 of which are already in place.

Of these 34 multi-product SEZs, there are 3-4 which have an area of 5,000 hectares.

“We will take a view on this and have a fresh look (after the bill is passed) on a case-by-case basis,” he said.

Mr Pillai further said one of the components of the new Land Acquisition Act would be that farmers would also be given an option of becoming stakeholders in the company that comes up on their land.

Wherever there is scope for acquisition of land or purchase of land in excess of the ceiling, it is a matter which the government would consider, Mr Pillai said.

The government has so far given formal approval to 404 SEZs and notified 172. It still has about 160 applications where the developers do not possess land.

Exports from the SEZs are likely to touch Rs 67,000 crore by the end of this year, almost double from the current Rs 33000 crore.

In the last 18 months, investments of Rs 52,000 crore has been made in the zones. FDI in the SEZs during the last 18 months have touched $3 billion and are expected to go up three-to-four fold in the one and half years, he said, adding that by 2009-end, these zones would have created six lakh jobs.

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