RIL's Maha Mumbai SEZ may get extension

The board of approvals (BoA) for special economic zones (SEZ) is likely to extend tomorrow the validity of in-principle clearance to Reliance Industries' Maha Mumbai SEZ under the new rules that limit its size to 5,000 hectares.

"The extension of validity has been under the new rules that limit the size of a SEZ to 5,000 hectares," a government official said. Reliance had earlier proposed Maha Mumbai SEZ over an area of 10,000 hectares and received in-principle approval for project in August last year.

The amendment to rules notified in March had reduced the validity of in-principle approval to one year from three years previously, but BoA was given the powers to extend the validity by two more years.

Besides the Maha Mumbai project, the BoA, headed by Commerce Secretary G K Pillai, will take up eight fresh proposals. These include five zones for in-principle nod and three for formal approvals. Of these, two relate to Infosys Technologies which wants to set up IT and ITES zones near Hyderabad. The biggest zone coming up for in-principle approval is by Ispat Industries, which wants to set up a 1,012 hectare multi-product SEZ in Maharashtra's Raigad district.

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Infosys, Ispat, Genpact & Enfield await Aug 8 SEZ meet of BoA

Four major industry players Infosys, Ispat, Genpact, Enfield await the August 8 crucial decision on Special Economic Zones (SEZ) of Board of Approvals (BoA).

osys has submitted two SEZ proposals of about 120 hectares and 61 in Andhra Pradesh. While Ispat's 1,012 hectares SEZ at Raigad in Maharashtra will come up for clearance.

Enfield Infrastructure has submitted three applications for setting up IT/ITES SEZs in 16 hectares at West Bengal. Genpact India has notified its desire to set up a 10 hectare IT/ITES SEZ in Jaipur and Adarsh Prime Projects a 468 hectare IT/ITES SEZ in Karnataka.

In all, 132 SEZs have been notified, in addition to 340 such projects with formal approval and 171 with in-principal nod.

According to the commerce ministry, over Rs 43123 crore have been invested in these notified SEZs and it says that these SEZ may provide direct employment to 35,053 persons.